Loading ...Recently it has been found that there is a notable increase in the circulation of malicious e-mail attachments all over the world. There are various unknown groups or people who are continuously sending malicious e-mails to millions of people worldwide. And these mails now are not mere a part of some spam but they directly contain malware. This is like direct distribution of malicious programs on a very large scale.
This has been on round for quite some time now and the pattern is somewhat the same. On one hand the spam levels are going down but on the other the degree of e-mails with malicious attachments is increasing massively.
According to Commtouch, a messaging and Web security technology company, there was an average of a few hundred million to two billion e-mails with malicious attachments that were sent per day in the starting of August this year. And by August 8, the number reached to 25 billion!!
Commtouch said, “A review of several end-user forums reveals that the email campaigns have been successful – with many users having opened the malware attachments. The infection rate is generally linear – the more malware is emailed, the greater the final number of infections. Once opened the malware contacts external servers and downloads several other malware files, which are then run on the infected machine. The purpose of these files is unclear.”
Going further the company said, “In the past large malware outbreaks have resulted in the expansion of botnets which have then been used to send large volumes of spam. Malware distribution therefore aimed to increase spam distribution, but this does not seem to be the case now.”
Now the question is what do these anonymous senders of such e-mails get after putting in so much time to design, draft and send such type of e-mails. Maybe the virus or malware in the e-mails is designed to increase the number of bots on the Web, which are then used to push Spam. Or maybe that the senders of such e-mails have other sinister plans that they intend to implement after a certain time period.
The best way advisable to prepare yourself for anything like this and keep your PCs protected is to avoid such random e-mails and more importantly, to gear up your computer systems with high-end and latest antivirus software.
