MessageLabs Intelligence Report: What Happened in January 2009

Not long ago various web security companies were trying to foresee the most important spam and Internet threat trends in 2009. Now the time has come to summarize the results for the first month of this year. MessageLabs, one of the major providers of integrated messaging and web security services, has recently released its monthly MessageLabs Intelligence Report for January 2009. This report provides the latest threat trends for January 2009 to keep you informed regarding the ongoing fight against viruses, spam and other unwelcome content.

MessageLabs Intelligence analysis of recent botnet activity has revealed that the top three most active botnets responsible for distributing spam are Mega-D (Ozdok), Cutwail (Pandex) and Rustock (Rustock). With the disappearance of the Srizbi botnet after the McColo shutdown in 2008, Mega-D (Ozdok) has filled the gap left by Srizbi, which on its rise had been responsible for about 50% of global spam. Mega-D has the highest throughput. It manages to send around 26 million spam messages per minute on average.

While talking about the most prominent spam campaigns in January 2009, MessageLabs Intelligence Report enumerates three of them. First of all, the research identified a number of examples of spam messages that were touting penny stocks in significant volumes. Most probably, many of these new spam messages have been sent from email addresses created through CAPTCHA-breaking tools. In the current financial situation this apparent opportunity to raise capital from very little investment may seem like a very attractive proposition for anyone who may be finding it hard to obtain credit by other means.

The other significant spam campaign in January was spreading fake emails at the aim of which was to further the goals of terrorist organizations. Another example of this kind of spam was related to the Gaza conflict. Spammers in this case were sending emails that purport to contain news about Israel's bombardment of Gaza. The email also has a link of the graphic video of Al Jazeera English Report which, actually, downloaded a Trojan.

January was also marked by the increased volumes of spam messages related to the newly elected US president Barack Obama and his inauguration. Spammers started sending emails in which they promised recipients tickets to the inauguration ceremony. Recipients were either offered non-existing tickets for a certain sum of money or free tickets that could be printed from a certain link which actually downloaded a Trojan. Finally, the other group of spam campaigns tried to trick users into visiting malicious Web sites and links that finally lead to malicious executables.