“Nigerian” Spammers look to Syria

According to Kaspersky Lab data, recent months have seen a surge in the number of Nigerian letters that contained some sort of reference to Syria. Spammers sent messages in the names of representatives from banks, humanitarian organizations as well as private individuals.

The scam messages, made to look like they come from reputed Syrian and UK banks, state that some of their clients would like to transfer their multi-million savings from their accounts because of the unrest in Syria, and were looking for a partner who would help them do so. Naturally, those that reply are guranteed a reward.

Tatyana Shcherbakova, Senior Spam Analyst, Kaspersky Lab, commented, We came across very brief messages in which the author merely wanted to get to know the recipient better. The texts of the messages made frequent use of words such as ‘turmoil’, ‘crisis’ or ‘revolution’. Having got the recipient’s attention, the scammers play on people’s natural desire for easy money and to help people in distress. Users shouldn’t respond to these types of emails because once you are in communication with a ‘Nigerian’ scammer, you risk being cheated.

According to the data in Kaspersky Lab’s spam report for September, Asia (59%) remained the leading regional source of spam – its contribution increasing by 4 percentage points from the previous month. Asia is followed by North America (20%), whose share grew by 2 percentage points and Eastern Europe (12%), whose share fell 2 percentage points. Western Europe (4%) and Latin America (2.4%) complete the top five rating.