China source of huge phishing surge

Spam watchers see major jump in scam spam sent from China

Analysts at email and web security firm

Marshal

have reported a major spike in the numbers of phishing email originating from machines in China over the last week. According to their figures, China leapt from tenth place to top of their list of phish-sending countries.

Along with a hefty contribution from South Korea, the surge means that a third of all phishing spotted by spam-watchers at

Marshal

‘s

TRACE

threat centre originated in the Far East, and Asia is a close second behind Europe on the chart of phishing sources by continent. Phishing as a whole has risen sharply with the recent surge, to levels not seen since July.

The US remains far ahead of the field in terms of spam in general, with phishing making up less than 3 per cent of all spam, according to

TRACE

‘s latest figures. See

here

for more phishing statistics from

Marshal

.

Posted on 04 December 2006 by

Virus Bulletin