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Ahmedabad, May 8, 2012 - Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore Technologies and the innovator of identity-based Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions, today announced the April 2012 Internet Threats Trend Report, prepared in collaboration with its partner, Commtouch.

Report began with the information on spam levels, in this quarter. Spam levels remained low relatively to the same period last year. Spam averaged 75% of all emails sent during the first quarter. Levels of email attached malware were also found to be low in the first quarter of 2012. Adding on to spam reports, pharmacy spam increased once again, as it did last quarter and Replica-themed spam also increased in the first quarter of the year by over 5%.

A new approach seen, this quarter was specific social engineering campaigns focused on the U.S. tax season which targeted both consumers and members of the accounting profession. Many CPAs have been victimized as the scale of reach of the February attack was indeed large. Many users (Accountant or not) have clicked on the links, out of sheer curiosity after reading mail subjects such as ‘fraudulent tax return assistance accusations’ or ‘income tax return fraud accusations’, which ensured its spread.

Facebook, as usual remained the popular outlet for attacks. This time again, the attacks were with, social engineering campaign featuring “an unwatchable video.” Several variants of this scam appeared on Facebook in the last few months. Says Abhilash Sonwane, Sr. VP, Product Management, Cyberoam, "The spamming of Facebook, with such video posts shows the importance attackers are giving on specific social engineering campaigns. Attackers are finding out common social issues to hit on and grab the maximum gain of it.”

Report also talked about emails carrying malware links being hosted on compromised websites or such sites being used as a platform for redirection. Having observed the phenomenon of hacked websites for some time, the report presents statistics and opinions on how site owners navigate the process of learning their sites have being hacked and repairing the damage. Data from the poll reveals that malicious actors are often able to compromise legitimate websites without the site owners' knowledge.

Other highlights from the April 2012 report included details about the phishing attacks targeted on account information for many services like banks, email and social network accounts, and online games. Report also included results of tracking billions of Web browsing sessions and URL requests, and its Web Filtering service which includes highly granular categorization of Web 2.0 content.