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Report
McAfee Threats Report:
Third Quarter 2009By David Marcus, Paula Greve, Sam Masiello, and David ScharounTMcAfee Labs
Report McAfee Threats Report: Third Quarter 2009
Table of Contents
Spam's Hot Summer 3Zombie Production Remains Healthy 3United States Still No. 1 in Zombies 4Spam by Country: South America Makes a Strong Showing 5Spam by Subject: Graduates Not Buying Viagra? 5
Spam and Social Engineering 6Google Reader Becomes Unwitting Spam Target 8Spammers Love a Good Tragedy 9
Web Threats 10Phishing Activity 12The Pirate Bay Effect 13
Cybercrime 14Operation "Get Rich or Die Tryin' " 14DDoS and Blackmail 15
Malware 16
About McAfee Labs 19
About McAfee, Inc. 19Report McAfee Threats Report: Third Quarter 2009
This continues to be a fascinating year for online threats, malware of all types, and cybercrime in particular. In this quarter's McAfee Threats Report we will discuss new findings, look at continuing trends, and unearth a few surprises. We continue to see rapid growth in malware. Web-based threats have reached new highs. Celebrity deaths, and news events in general, serve as lures in scams, spams, and phishing attacks. Disasters especially attract a large audience of potential victims. Fraudulent security products continue to scam unsuspecting users out of their money. Chinese pharmacy spam runs were the rage for a month or two. Google searches lead to more and more threats. We also observed some very interesting events in the world of cybercrime. One of the most surprising recent trends is the rise in pirated movie and software sites. Our researchers noticed 300 percent growth this quarter in websites that distribute pirated movies and software. Is this increase due to the economic downturn, or is technology at a point where it is easier to download feature-length movies on the day they become available in theaters?
Spam's Hot SummerSpam did not take a holiday during this quarter, as email and spam volumes reached another all-time high, breaking the second-quarter 2009 record by 10 percent. Last quarter had set the all-time record for email and spam levels, but the record was short lived. Spam as a percent of total email volume also set a new record, reaching 92 percent during the quarter. Compared with last year's third quarter, spam is up 24 percent. And July set a record for the most spam ever sent in a single month. June 2009 was the former record holder, but again the "honor" was short lived. We can hope that spam will take some time off next quarter, for the upcoming holiday period. This is unlikely, however, as the fourth quarter typically sets new annual highs. (This was not the case in 2008, however, due to the effects of the McColo ISP shutdown.)
200 100%180 90%160 80%140 70%120 60%100 50%80 40%60 30%40 20%20 10%0 0%Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q32005 2006 2006 2006 2006 2007 2007 2007 2007 2008 2008 2008 2008 2009 2009 2009Billions of Spam Messages per Day% of Spam
Figure 1: Global spam volumes and spam as a percentage of all mail.
Zombie Production Remains HealthyWe observed the creation of 13 million new zombies this quarter. This rate is actually slightly down (by about one million zombies) from last quarter, which was a record quarter. By our count nearly 40 million new zombies were created thus far in 2009. That's an average of 148,000 new zombies created every day this year.
3Report McAfee Threats Report: Third Quarter 2009
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0JANFEBMARAPRMAYJUNJULAUGSEP200920092009200920092009200920092009
Figure 2: New zombies sending spam, by month.
United States Still No. 1 in ZombiesZombie production in the United States fell by about one half-million from the previous quarter, but this was still good enough to hold onto the number one ranking by country. China remained number two and closed the gap, increasing production by about 300,000 zombies during this quarter. The Russians must have enjoyed a late summer vacation as their zombie output fell by 50 percent, and this is the second quarter in a row that Russia saw a significant decrease in zombie creation. Meanwhile, Germany saw production increase by 200,000 zombies in the quarter.
Q3 2009 Q2 2009Country Percent of Total Country Percent of TotalUnited States 13.... [download for more]
