How Celebrity News Shapes the Spam Landscape
- Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 7:22
- Threat Research
Posted on behalf of Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Symantec Hosted Services
Happy New Year! The uncertainty of what 2010 will bring news-wise is exactly what makes the spam landscape, well, interesting and unpredictable. Although we can predict general threat trends as we have in our 2010 Security Predictions, we can never foresee spam’s entire future which makes everyday a virtual crap-shoot – to an extent – for our MessageLabs Intelligence Team.
Let’s take a look back at the events that shaped the 2009 spam landscape:
The global credit crisis and the election of US President Barack Obama provided two major themes to much of the spam blocked in early 2009. Other events, festivities and news stories also contributed to many spam themes in 2009, including:
• St. Valentine’s Day on 14 February
• St. Patrick’s Day and NCAA March Madness in the US in March
• 4 July Independence Day in the US
• Global flu pandemic of H1N1
• Fatal crash of Air France flight 447
• Deaths of singer Michael Jackson and actor Patrick Swayze.
Interestingly, following the death of Michael Jackson on 25 June, the topic had been quickly adopted in several spam campaigns and at the time, approximately one percent of all spam referenced Michael Jackson.
Even before Jackson’s death, news of Farrah Fawcett’s passing precipitated a spate of spam purporting to relate to her (continue reading...)