Russia is source of most spam

Russia has finally buried the US…in spam. Russia topped the list of sources of global spam, with the US a distant 18th, according to Kaspersky Labs’ October spam report.

Kaspersky Labs said that the volume of spam coming from Russia doubled in October compared to September, as did the spam volume from Ukraine, which placed third in the spam list. India came in second.

Kaspersky attributed the “poor” showing of the US to the closure of the Pushdo/Cutwail and Bredolab botnets, both of which had extensive US networks of zombie computers. These busts contributed to a 3.7% drop in spam.

Despite these successes, spammers have wasted no time in searching for other ways to make money in the run-up to the holiday season, said Maria Namestnikova, senior spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “It’s very likely that near the end of the year, spammers will turn to Christmas-related mailings.”

The report showed that phishing emails accounted for 0.87% of all emails, a decline of 2.86% from September. PayPal was targeted most by phishers, accounting for one third of all attacks.

Spammers showed a renewed interest in Facebook after a lull in September, with the social networking site taking over second place in the phishing list from eBay, Namestnikova noted. The other two most popular targets for phishing attacks were HSBC and Blizzard Entertainment, the World of Warcraft developer.