China behind threefold increase in global phishing attacks

Phishing emails and Christmas Spam rates skyrocket

Basingstoke, UK - Marshal’s Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) Team today announced a threefold increase in phishing emails in the last week. The significant increase in phishing emails is primarily due to a massive jump in phishing messages being sent from South Korea and China, according to the TRACE team.Phishing emails increased from 0.4 per cent of total spam in November 24 to now represent 2.2 per cent of total spam.  This signifies the highest level of phishing emails since July 2006, according to TRACE. The spike represents a tripling of the average phishing email rates over the last six months. China is now the number one generator of phishing emails in the world, jumping from 10th position last week. 

Major targets for phishing emails in the past week include Fifth Third Bank, National Australia Bank and Bendigo Bank, according to the TRACE team.

In addition to the rise in phishing, the TRACE team reported that Christmas Spam rates have exploded over November. At the end of October there was almost zero Christmas Spam distributed, but it now represents 10.9 per cent of spam overall.

“Like spam levels, which have almost doubled in the past month, the current spike in phishing emails is in part being driven by the Christmas season,” said Bradley Anstis, Director of Product Management for Marshal.

“Scammers and spammers are ramping up their efforts because they are aware that there a more consumers shopping online, looking for gift ideas and receiving e-cards.  There are more people who are likely to open the messages.”

The Spam Volume Index launched by the Marshal TRACE team this month (http://www.marshal.com/trace/spam_statistics.asp ) shows that overall spam levels continue to rise despite a slight drop two weeks ago; reaching an all-time high last week. This upward trend is likely to continue through Christmas and New Year, according to the TRACE team. 

Spammers are no longer using one spam variation repeatedly until it no longer gets through. They are constantly varying their spam techniques such as with “Ransom Note Spam”, using animated GIFs and extreme use of image randomisation. Spammers will often use a technique once before moving on to another method,” said Anstis.

Marshal’s anti-spam product, MailMarshal, consistently blocked over 99 per cent of all spam over the last six months during this time.



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About Marshal
Marshal is a privately-owned company with its worldwide and EMEA headquarters at Basingstoke in the United Kingdom and regional offices in Paris (France), Johannesburg (South Africa), Houston (USA), Atlanta (USA) and Auckland (New Zealand). Marshal is a global vendor of Comprehensive Secure Email and Internet Management solutions that integrate content filtering, compliance, secure messaging and archiving, to protect businesses against email and internet-based threats.

Forty per cent of the Global Fortune 500 companies use Marshal security solutions to secure their corporate messaging networks and web against internal abuse and external threats such as viruses, spam and malicious code. More than seven million users in 17,000 companies worldwide use Marshal's highly acclaimed MailMarshal and WebMarshal solutions to protect their networks, employees, business assets and corporate reputation and to comply with corporate governance legislation requirements.

About the Marshal TRACE Team
TRACE (Threat Research and Content Engineering) is a group of Marshal security experts who constantly monitor and respond to Internet security threats. TRACE provides a service to Marshal customers as part of standard product maintenance. The service includes Marshal’s anti-Spam technology known as SpamCensor, found in the flagship MailMarshal solution. TRACE analyses Spam, phishing and Internet security trends and provides frequent automated updates to MailMarshal customers. TRACE also provides “Zero Day” security protection to secure MailMarshal customers against new email exploits the day they emerge.

For more information about Marshal visit www.marshal.com