India retains the top spot as a source of spam worldwide, with the United States moving up from sixth in 2011 to second in 2012, according to a new study.
According to Cisco’s research, the top language for spam messages in 2012 was English, followed by Russian, Catalan, Japanese, and Danish.
The study noted
Since the large-scale botnet takedowns of 2010, high-volume spam isn’t as effective as it once was, and spammers have learned and changed their tactics. There is a clear evolution toward smaller, more targeted campaigns based on world events and particular subsets of users.High-volume spam is also more likelyto be noticed by mail providers and shut down before its purpose can be fulfilled.
With so much pirated content and increasing number of first time Internet users in India, spam is likely to rise further. Earlier, security vendor Sophos labs said that India is the largest spam relaying country.
From January to March 2012, Cisco data shows a spike in spam relating to Windows software, which coincided with the release of the Windows 8 operating system. From September to November 2012, spammers ran a series of campaigns
posing as cellular companies, coinciding with the release of the iPhone 5.
Malware
Nearly one third of web malware encounters resulted from domains hosted in the United States while Russia, China, Denmark and the UK also contributed to malware.
Android malware grew substantially faster than any other form of web delivered malware, an important trend given that Android is reported to hold the majority of mobile device market share worldwide. However, mobile malware is only a very tiny portion when compared to web malware.
Full study here (pdf).
