Cybercriminals involved in spam distribution tried to capitalise on public fears when the WannaCry ransomware epidemic struck in May, according to IT security product company Kaspersky Lab’s ‘Spam and phishing in Q2 2017‘ report. Knowing that people were infected with this ransomware, and searching for ways to get their encrypted data back, fraudsters sent out spam and phishing emails, offering users services to fight against the epidemics.
The WannaCry ransomware attack affected more than 200,000 computers, resulting in panic, and spammers instantly capitalised on the opportunity, the report says. Researchers detected a large amount of messages offering services such as protection from WannaCry attacks, data recovery, and, moreover, educational workshops and courses for users. Spammers successfully used a traditional scheme of fraudulent offers to install software updates on affected computers. However, links were re-directing users to phishing pages, where the personal data of victims would have been stolen.
One of the main trends in the past three months is the number of mass mailings targeted at corporate networks, says Kaspersky Lab. These have expanded since the beginning of the year. Spammers began to widely disguise malicious mailings as corporate dialogues, by using the identities of corporate mail services, including real signatures, logos and even banking information. In archives attached to the email, cyber-criminals sent out exploit packages targeted at stealing FTP, email and other passwords. Kaspersky Lab stresses that most attacks on the corporate sector have financial goals.
Darya Gudkova, Spam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab said: “During the second quarter of the year, we have seen that the main trends in spam and phishing attacks have continued to grow. The use of WannaCry in mass mailings proves that cybercriminals are very attentive and reactive to international events. Moreover, cybercriminals have started to focus more on the B2B sector, seeing it as lucrative. We expect this tendency will continue to grow, and the overall amount of corporate attacks and their variety will expand.”
In the second quarter of the year researchers detected a growth in number of mass mailings with malicious Trojans, sent on behalf of international delivery services. Spammers were sending shipping reports with information about non-existent parcel deliveries. With the aim to infect computers or to steal personal credentials, criminals were found spreading download links with malware, including the banking Trojan Emotet, which was first detected back in 2014.
Overall, the volume of malicious mass mailings have increased by 17 per cent, according to the report. The average share of spam in global email traffic for the second quarter amounted to 56.97 per cent, a rise on the previous quarter. Visit Securelist.com.
