Between October-December 2007, the U.S. relayed far more spam than any other country - testament to the sheer number of computers in the country that have been taken over by remote hackers. Representing the lion's share of total spam traffic, the United States' 21 percent slice means that more than one in five of all the world's spam e-mails was being sent through compromised American computers.
"Responsible for a third of all unwanted e-mail, USA and Russia can be viewed as the two dirty men of the spam generation, polluting e-mail traffic with unwanted and potentially malicious messages," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "It's not the case that a third of the world's spammers are based in those countries, but that legions of computers are poorly defended, allowing hackers to break in and turn them into botnets for the spreading of spam and malware."
As for continents, falling from first to third place, North America has managed to reduce the proportion of spam it is relaying from 32.3 percent to 26.5 percent, and has been overtaken by Asia at the top of the chart, and Europe in second place.
"Financially-motivated criminals are controlling huge proportions of compromised zombie machines to launch these spam campaigns. This is big business for cyber criminals, so the authorities have the daunting task of educating users about the dangers of clicking on links or attachments in spam mails, while also making sure that service providers help in identifying compromised computers," continued Theriault. "This is a worldwide issue, affecting everyone who owns a computer. Businesses and computer users must take a more proactive approach to spam filtering and IT security in order to avoid adding to the problem."
MP3 pump-and-dump spam
Using spam to artificially inflate the price of stock is an ongoing spam trend, but October 2007 saw one of the most bizarre schemes, when a pump-and-dump campaign used MP3 files in an attempt to manipulate share prices. In an effort to bypass spam filters, cyber criminals sent out their messages with supposed music files from stars such as Elvis Presley, Fergie and Carrie Underwood attached. The files actually contained a monotone voice encouraging people to buy shares in a little-known company.
"Some may have thought Elvis had returned from the grave when they received these spam e-mails, but they were designed to trick armchair investors into making unwise investments," explained Theriault. "Spammers will go to extraordinary lengths to try and ensure that their marketing messages reach their intended pool of victims."
