Spammers also used the WikiLeaks name to bypass spam filters, the report said. “Spam is usually dominated by the Christmas and New Year holiday theme in December, but in 2010 it had to share the limelight with WikiLeaks, which once again underlines just how serious the scandal surrounding the website was at the end of the year", observed Maria Namestnikova, senior spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab.
India maintained its position as the most popular source of spam in December, accounting for 9.89% of the total spam volume. Russia sprinted to second place, overtaking Italy and Vietnam in the spam source race. Brazil came in fifth, with 4% of total spam volume, according to the report.
In December, the amount of spam in email traffic increased by 0.3 percentage points compared to November and averaged 77.1%. Phishing emails accounted for 0.14% of all mail traffic, a decrease of 0.26 percentage points compared to the previous month. Malicious files were found in 1.75% of all emails, an increase of 0.15 percentage points compared with the previous month. Most malware was detected in spam received by users in India, Russia and Vietnam.
Criminals proceedings against suspected creator of the Mega-D/Ozdok botnet, Oleg Nikolaenko, were instigated in the US during December. Nikolaenko is charged with violating US anti-spam laws (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003) and, if found guilty, could face up to three years in prison or a fine of $25 000, according to the report.
The Mega-D/Ozdok botnet’s infected machines were used to distribute spam containing offers for fake medications and designer goods. Experts estimate that at its peak, the botnet could distribute 30% to 35% of the world’s spam, according to Kaspersky Labs.
The fight against the botnet started in 2008, but it was only a year later in November 2009 that any results were achieved when numerous command centers were closed down. This only led to a temporary drop in the network’s capacity – by the beginning of December 2009 the botnet was back up and running at full capacity.
"Immediately before the start of the holidays we witnessed a dip in the amount of spam. This is a seasonal phenomenon – at the end of the year the amount of spam mailings always falls off because a lot of the infected botnet computers are switched off”, Namestnikova said.