Glancing at the results of Q1 2020, Kaspersky Lab analysts anticipate that the COVID-19 topic will continue to be actively used by cybercriminals for the foreseeable future. To attract potential victims, the pandemic will be mentioned even on “standard” fake pages and in spam mailings.The topic is also used extensively in fraudulent schemes offering compensation and material assistance. It is highly likely that this type of fraud will become more frequent.

The average share of spam in global mail traffic (54.61%) in Q1 2020 decreased by 1.58 p.p. against the previous reporting period, while the number of attempted redirects totaled nearly 120 million.

Top of the quarter’s list of spam-source countries is Russia, with a share of 20.74%. Our security solutions blocked 49,562,670 malicious mail attachments, while the most common mail-based malware family, with a 12.35% share of mail traffic, was Trojan.Win32.Agentb.gen.