According to Kaspersky Lab, the COVID-19 topic, which appeared in Q1 this year, is still in play for spammers and phishers. Tthe so-called second wave could lead to a surge in mailings offering various coronavirus-related treatments.

• In Q3 2020, the largest share of spam was recorded in August (50.07%). The average share of spam in global mail traffic was 48.91%, down 1.27 p.p. against the previous reporting period.

• The Top 5 countries by amount of outgoing spam remained the same as in the previous quarter. Only their shares changed. The biggest increase came from Russia, which ranked first, jumping by 5 p.p. to 23.52%. The shares of the remaining top-fivers did not fluctuate by more than one percentage point. Second-place Germany gained 11.01%, the US in third picked up 10.85%, France 6.69%, and China in fifth 6.33%.

• The bottom half of the Top 10 changed more significantly. For instance, it said goodbye to Turkey, which this time took 11th place (1.73%). Sixth place was taken by the Netherlands (3.89%), seventh by Brazil (3.26%), eighth by Spain (2.52%), ninth by Japan (2.30%), and Poland (1.80%) rounds out the Top 10, up one position on last quarter.

• The most widespread malware in Q3 mail traffic was assigned the verdict Trojan-PSW.MSIL.Agensla.gen (8.44%). In second place was Exploit.MSOffice.CVE-2017-11882.gen (5.67%), while Trojan.MSOffice.SAgent.gen (4.85%) came third.
• As before, the Online Stores category absorbed the most phishing attacks, despite its share dropping slightly against Q2 2020 (by 0.20 p.p.) to 19.22%. Global Web Portals (14.48%) in second position and Banks (10.89%) in third were also non-movers.

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