India accounts for 3.4% of spam distribution worldwide

Malicious mails and attachments spreading around the Internet is not new to anyone well-versed with the internet. If you look at your own mailbox, you would find yourself spammed with almost 50% emails that are either forwards, marketing material, non- subscribed subscriptions and even worse, exclusive emails promising explicit photos and friend requests. Also between those emails you will find malicious mass mailings of fake notifications from banks, social networking sites and even from remote people telling them you have won a few billion pounds I cash.

Altaf Halde, managing director of Kaspersky Lab, South Asia, said, “Spammers are becoming more intelligent in masking their messages under the garb of offering something genuine to the recipients – be it Valentine’s day discount or news about Ukraine, etc. And once unsuspecting users have clicked or downloaded the email attachment, Trojans are downloaded without the user’s knowledge, which are capable of stealing data or even holding the data at ransom (encrypting the data and demanding money to decrypt the data, like CryptoLocker). Internet users in India should start taking their digital security seriously. With the number of threat vectors increasing alarmingly along with the rise of cybercriminal activities, it is imperative that Internet users in India protect themselves with a genuine Internet Security or Anti-Virus software. With regards to spam, the government should initiate spam laws that will deter spammers from making India their safe havens.”

February’s love-themed malicious spam was dominated by Trojans, as the cybercriminals’ mass mailings targeted users with a Trojan-Dropper. The Trojan installs two malicious programs on the system – one is spyware that steals all document files (*. Docx, *. Xlsx, *. Pdf) from the computer and sends them to a specific mailbox; another is IRC-bot/worm called ShitStorm which can carry out DDoS attacks on websites and spread copies of itself via MSN and P2P services. If recipients respond to this sort of email, their computer can easily become part of a botnet.

In addition to Trojan spyware this month’s malicious spam included ransomware – a type of malware that blocks the user's computer and then demands money to unblock it. The explicit photos also turned out to be malicious programs and among them was the Andromeda backdoor that allows cybercriminals to secretly control a compromised computer.

Meanwhile, ‘Nigerian’ scammers could not pass up the opportunity to exploit the situation in Ukraine and the tragic events that followed in order to cheat users out of their money. They cited some familiar stories about unfortunate tourists in Kiev who had all their money stolen, followed by a request for financial assistance.

Top 3 types of organizations targeted most frequently by phishers were: social networking sites (27.3%), email services (19.34%) and e-pay organizations (16.73%). Kaspersky Lab specialists also came across fraudulent notifications in February that claimed to be from the Malaysian HongLeong bank.