Kaspersky Lab: Spam and phishing in Q1 2016

Trending: dramatic increase in volume of malicious spam

The first quarter of 2016 saw a dramatic increase in the number of unsolicited emails containing malicious attachments. Over the last two years the number of email antivirus detections on computers with a Kaspersky Lab product installed fluctuated between 3 and 6 million. At the end of 2015 this number began to grow and in early 2016 there was a sharp upturn.

Number of email antivirus detections on computers with a Kaspersky Lab product installed

In March, the number of email antivirus detections reached 22,890,956, which is four times more than the average for the same period last year.

With the rise of drive-by-downloads, we could have expected malicious email attachments to have long since given way to malicious sites that the user accesses via a link in an email. However, the use of emails has its advantages (for the attackers): the content of the email may encourage the user not only to download a malicious file but also launch it. It’s also possible that malicious attachments are enjoying a new wave of popularity because in the last couple of years the developers of the most popular browsers have considered adding protection against infected and phishing websites (using in-house developments as well as partnering with well-known anti-virus vendors). This is something that built-in protection at the email client level does not provide yet. Therefore, if a potential victim doesn’t use antivirus software, their computer can be easily infected via email.

Read more: https://securelist.com/analysis/quarterly-spam-reports/74682/spam-and-phishing-in-q1-2016/