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Symantec: Surge in spam from Chinese domains

Victoria Ho ZDNet Asia

Published: 13 Aug 2007 15:00 BST

There has been a significant rise in the amount of spam originating from Chinese domains, according to the latest statistics from security vendor Symantec.

In a report issued on Monday, Symantec noted a sharp spike in spam messages containing URLs that use ".cn", the top-level domain (TLD) for China. During the month of July, the number of spam domains rose from virtually zero to around 450.

One reason for the growing popularity of Chinese domains is the ban on TLDs from other countries on spam blacklists, according to Symantec. Spammers are thus forced to register new TLDs from countries not yet on the blacklists.

Spam is also becoming increasingly localised for specific target markets, said Symantec.

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The security vendor also noted a drop in spam using Hong Kong (".hk") TLDs, which could be a result of the recent enactment of anti-spam laws in the country.

Symantec's report also noted a decline in image spam. Some 10 percent of all spam messages in July were image-based, compared to about 50 percent earlier this year.

However, the decline in image spam is giving rise to attachments in other forms. Greetings-card spam topped the list.

Over 250 million greetings-card spam messages were sent, each containing links to Trojans which get downloaded when clicked.

Other forms of spam on the rise include PDF spam, Excel and ZIP-file spam. Although Excel and ZIP-file spam numbers remain low, Symantec's report stated that finding new attachment formats is an indication of "just how committed spammers are to evading anti-spam filters".