HYDERABAD: With 2.78 per cent of the total global spam attacks from July to September, India was found to be one of the top ten countries from where spam messages originated. The “Spam and Phishing in Q3 2018” report by Kaspersky found that India ranked 9th when it came to being the source for malicious e-mail content. A maximum number of spam e-mails originated from China (13.47 per cent) followed by United States of America (10.89 per cent).
India, equally, is also on the receiving end. It ranked 7th among countries targeted by malicious e-mails. About 3.59 per cent of spam attacks in the world happened in India during the period. This list was topped by Germany, which recorded 9.83 per cent attacks. Russia, which recently faced flak for cyber-intrusion during US elections, came second with 6.61 per cent attacks.
What are spam mails?
They come in the form of an offer of personal loan, or dating opportunities, or higher education admissions. Shockingly, now they have even begun to get hold of personal data and use the same in communications.
For instance, one such spam e-mail published in the report read: “I do know, marily47 is your password.”“You do not know me and you are probably thinking why you are getting this e-mail correct? Well, I actually setup a malware on the adult videos website and do you know what, you visited this site to experience fun. While you were watching... a software obtained your complete contacts from you. (sic)” The e-mail also demanded a ransom, in Bitcoins, to not disclose the “damaging evidence.”
The report said: “The spam campaign was carried out in several stages, and it is likely that the fraudsters made use of a range of personal information databases, as evidenced, for example, by the telephone number formats that varied from stage to stage.”Another malicious spam campaign that was detected in the report was aimed at corporate users.
“The main target was passwords. The cybercriminals attempted to infect victim computers with Loki Bot malware... The latter were made to look like business correspondence or notifications from well-to-do companies.” Attacks on the banking sector were also recorded.
