Kaspersky Lab, the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions in its June 2014 spam report says it registered an increase in fraudulent messages sent to mimic travel booking services and notifications from Electronic Arts in June.
[blockquote right=”pull-right” cite=”Kaspersky Lab”]The Top three sources of spam around the world in June were the US (13.2%), Russia (7%) and China (5.6%). Germany saw a big surge in the number of antivirus detections, doubling the previous month’s share to 16.4 percent, taking the top spot from the UK. The US remained in second place on 9 percent.[/blockquote]
The fraudulent messages were sent to gain access to consumer personal account information, according to the tech security company.
According to the endpoint protection solutions firm, the fake notifications imitate hotel booking confirmations or air tickets and usually contain Trojan spyware masked as bills for reservations. Phishers also used fake notifications from the U.S. video game maker Electronic Arts in an attempt to access users’ personal accounts in the company’s online store Origin.
Kaspersky Lab noted that as a rule, fraudulent messages imitating correspondence from booking services contained the Ursnif Trojan that steals confidential data and sends it to a remote server. It can listen to network traffic, download and run other malicious programs, as well as disable some system applications such as the firewall. The phishers who tried to access the personal accounts for Electronic Art’s Origin online store sent out an email saying the online store was enhancing account protection and asked the recipients to confirm they held an account.
In addition, during the month of June, Kaspersky Lab detected that the percentage of spam in email traffic averaged 64.8 percent, which was five percentage points less than in May. The Top three sources of spam around the world in June were the US (13.2%), Russia (7%) and China (5.6%). Germany saw a big surge in the number of antivirus detections, doubling the previous month’s share to 16.4 percent, taking the top spot from the UK. The US remained in second place on 9 percent.
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