Dubai: Spam attacks in the UAE have surged 400 per cent in the first nine months of 2010 compared with 2009 and continue to wreak havoc among innocent victims, a leading IT security company said.
"There has been a 400 per cent increase in spam volumes in the UAE," said Nick Black, Technical Manager for internet security firm Trend Micro. The company has recorded over 80 million spam attacks daily from January to September in the UAE, compared to under 20 million over the same period in 2009.
Black attributes this partly to the increase in the number of hosts in the UAE in 2010. "These hosts are typically botnets and the owners of these devices may not even know they are infected," he added. A botnet, or robot network, is a group of computers running a computer application controlled and manipulated by the owner or the software source. Cyber criminals sell these botnets to attackers in sets of 10,000 to 200,000 at a time for a few hundred dollars.
Trend Micro said it detects 3.5 new threats every second. "The underground economy is growing very quickly and is generating more revenue than the drugs trade in 2010."
The book Beyond Security, states phishing has grown exponentially since 2007, when it led to $2 billion (Dh7.34 billion) in losses.
The UAE's banking industry is the target of a extensive phishing campaign, Black said. Banks have repeatedly asked customers not to divulge online banking logon details to any third party. "While these attacks may originate anywhere in the world, the main nations where spam originates are Russia, China, Turkey and some east European countries," he said.
