Spam and phishing in 2019

guest · May 15, 2019

Spam and phishing in Q1 2019
May 15, 2019
https://securelist.com/spam-and-phishing-in-q1-2019/90795/

Banks are firmly established as top phishing targets. Scammers try to make their fake messages as believable as possible by substituting legitimate domains into the sender’s address, copying the layout of official emails, devising plausible pretexts, etc

First place in the Top 3 countries by number of Mail Anti-Virus triggers yet again went to Germany (11.88%). It is followed by Vietnam (6.24%) in second position and Russia (5.70%) in third. [...]
Conclusion
In Q1 2019, the average share of spam in global mail traffic rose by 0.06 p.p. to 55.97%, and the Anti-Phishing system prevented more than 111,832,308 redirects to phishing sites, up 35,220,650 in comparison with the previous reporting period.

As previously, scammers wasted no opportunity to exploit high-profile media events for their own purposes (Apple product launch, New Zealand terror attack). Sextortion has not gone away — on the contrary, to make such schemes more believable, cybercriminals have come up with new cover stories about the message senders.
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guest · Jun 24, 2019

Hospitality industry at highest risk of phishing
June 24, 2019
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252465577/Hospitality-industry-at-highest-risk-of-phishing

Large organisations in the hospitality industry have the highest phish-prone percentage (PPP) of 48% and are therefore most likely to fall victim to a phishing attack, a report shows.
The transportation industry is at the lowest risk, with large organisations in the sector scoring a PPP of just 16%, according to the latest Phishing by industry benchmarking report by security awareness training firm KnowBe4.

The report is based on an analysis of nearly nine million users across 18,000 organisations with more than 20 million simulated phishing attacks across 19 industries.

In the medium-sized business category, the construction industry was revealed at the highest risk with a PPP of 37%, followed by insurance (35%) and manufacturing (34%). Among small business, construction again came top with a PPP of 38%, followed by retail (37%) and insurance (36%).
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KnowBe4: Report: 2019 Phishing By Industry Benchmarking (PDF - 652 KB): https://www.knowbe4.com/hubfs/2019PhishingByIndustryBenchmarkingReport.pdf

guest · Aug 28, 2019

Spam and phishing in Q2 2019
August 28, 2019
https://securelist.com/spam-and-phishing-in-q2-2019/92379/

In the second quarter of 2019, scammers were making active use of cloud-based data storage services such as Google Drive and Google Storage to hide their illegal content. The reasoning behind this is simple: a link from a legitimate domain is seen as more trustworthy by both users and spam filters. Most often, such links point to text files, tables, presentations, and other documents containing text and a link, say, to an advertised product or phishing page.
Global sporting events
Major sporting events attract not only millions of fans, but also numerous scammers looking to exploit them. As such, in Q2 we detected a spam mailing timed to coincide with the 2019 UEFA Europa League Final in Baku. Recipients were asked to guess the winner of the match and earn the chance to win up to £200,000. [...]
Conclusion
In Q2 2019, the average share of spam in global mail traffic fell by 1.67 p.p. to 57.64%, while the Anti-Phishing system prevented more than 130 million redirects to phishing sites, up 18 million on the previous reporting period.
Cybercriminals continue to look for new ways to deliver spam and improve old ones. In Q2, they used popular Google services to distribute spam. Blackmailers are also trying out new methods. Alongside threats to ordinary users, attempts were made to blackmail companies by threatening to send spam mailings in their name.
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guest · Nov 26, 2019

Spam and phishing in Q3 2019
November 26, 2019
https://securelist.com/spam-report-q3-2019/95177/

Amazon Prime
In Q3, we registered numerous scam mailings related to Amazon Prime. Most of the phishing emails with a link to a fake Amazon login page offered new prices or rewards for buying things, or reported problems with membership, etc.
Apple product launch
In September, Apple unveiled its latest round of products, and as usual the launch was followed by fans and scammers alike — we detected phishing emails in mail traffic aimed at stealing Apple ID authentication data. [...]
Conclusion
The average share of spam in global mail traffic (56.26%) this quarter decreased by 1.38 p.p. against the previous reporting period, while the number of attempted redirects to phishing pages compared to Q2 2019 fell by 25 million to just over 105 million.

Top in this quarter’s list of spam-source countries is China, with a share of 20.43%.
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guest · Apr 8, 2020

Spam and phishing in 2019
April 8, 2020
https://securelist.com/spam-report-2019/96527/

Figures of the year

The share of spam in mail traffic was 56.51%, which is 4.03 p.p. more than in 2018.

The biggest source of spam this year was China (21.26%).

44% of spam e-mails were less than 2 KB in size.

Malicious spam was detected most commonly with the Exploit.MSOffice.CVE-2017-11882 verdict.

The Anti-Phishing system was triggered 467,188,119 times.

17 % of unique users encountered phishing.

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[...] Wrap-up
• TV premieres, high-profile sporting events, and the release of new gadgets were exploited by scammers to steal users’ personal data or money.

• In the search for new ways to bypass spam filters, attackers are developing new methods of delivering their messages. This year, they made active use of various Google services, as well as popular social networks (Instagram) and video hosting sites (YouTube).
• Cybercriminals continue to use the topic of finance in schemes aimed at gaining access to users’ personal data, infecting computers with malware, or stealing funds from victims’ accounts.

• The main trend of 2019 was the rise in the number of attacks on the corporate sector. Fraudulent schemes previously used to repeatedly attack ordinary users changed direction, adding new intricacies to cybercriminal tactics.
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