The shift in phishing targets, says the IT security vendor, is linked to the continuing problems with the global economy, with fraudsters demonstrating a preference for real money instead of virtual funds.
As a result, says the report, banks and financial services became more attractive targets in October, with social networks and online games receiving less attention from the phishers.
On the mass mailings front, Kaspersky reports that October was rich in sensational events, which, as usual, the spammers exploited to the full.
This exploitation, Infosecurity notes, is almost certainly the result of hackers analysing the increasing rich data stream that comes out of Twitter’s trending topics resources.
During October, Kaspersky notes that mass mailings were registered that referred to the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the majority of them containing malicious code.
Spammers also reacted to another death, that of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on 20 October, with some classic ‘Nigerian’ (forward fee) letters. Internet users received emails allegedly sent by Gaddafi’s `relatives’ and his `former officers,’ who had allegedly inherited part of his `countless treasures’.
All the letters, says the report, contained offers to share some of the wealth. There were also messages with a Christmas or New Year twist adding a seasonal flavour to October’s spam, and tended to contain adverts for presents and trips during the festive season.
As far as traffic is concerned, Kaspersky says that the sources of spam traffic distributed more evenly throughout the world than in previous months. In Q3 2011, almost 50% of spam traffic came from the top five source countries.
In October, however, these countries contributed just 33.4%. At the same time, more spam emanated from other countries included in our rating of top sources.
That rating is still headed by India (-4.7 percentage points) followed by South Korea (-0.7 percentage points), Brazil (-4.1 percentage points) and Indonesia (-3.4 percentage points), notes the report, adding that Italy was the surprise package in fifth place (+2.47 percentage points).
Kaspersky also reports there was a drop (-2 percentage points) in the share of malicious files found in emails in October. The amount of mail antivirus detections in Russia, meanwhile, nearly doubled (+8.26 percentage points), and as a result Russia took a significant lead at the top of this particular rating.
The usual suspects – the US and the UK – completed the top three countries with the most mail antivirus detections (+2.1 and +1.2 percentage points respectively).