In Sophos' web and email threat report for September, the company found a rise in the percentage of infected email compared to August, with 0.12 percent of all emails globally ails were carrying malicious email attachments.
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| A copy of the Jolie email |
Sophos said this was primarily due to a coordinated campaign by hackers to spam out the Pushdo Trojan horse (posing as naked pictures of Angelina Jolie and "Holly Berry" [sic] en masse during the second half of September.
During a single 24-hour period in the last week of September, Sophos reports that the Pushdo Trojan accounted for almost 4 in every 5 infected emails.
"The Pushdo Trojan has been spammed out every Wednesday since March 2007 using a variety of enticing disguises, but lately, the cybercriminals have stepped up a gear and begun to spam innocent computer users at any time and on any day of the week," said Sophos senior security consultant Carole Theriault.
