8x more malicious email attachments spammed out in Q3 2008

IT security and control firm Sophos has released the results of its investigation into the latest spam trends and revealed the top twelve spam-relaying countries for the third quarter of 2008.  The figures show an alarming rise in the proportion of spam emails sent with malicious attachments between July – September 2008, as well as an increase in spam attacks using social engineering techniques to snare unsuspecting computer users.

Sophos’s latest report reveals that one in every 416 email messages between July and September contained a dangerous attachment, designed to infect the recipient’s computer – a staggering eight-fold rise compared to the previous quarter where the figure stood at only one in every 3,333 emails.

Sophos has identified that much of this increase can be attributed to several large-scale malware attacks made by spammers during the period.  The worst single attack was the Agent-HNY Trojan horse which was spammed out disguised as the Penguin Panic arcade game for Apple iPhones.  Other major incidents included the EncPk-CZ Trojan which pretended to be a Microsoft security patch, and the Invo-Zip malware, which masqueraded as a notice of a failed parcel delivery from firms such as UPS.

Windows users opening any of these attachments exposed their PCs to the risk of infection and potentially put their identity and finances at risk.  The most widespread attacks seen by Sophos are not designed to run on Unix and Mac OS X.