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Researchers point to a spike in spam

There has been a dramatic increase in spam emails over the past six weeks, it has been claimed.

According to new research by scientists at Symantec, the large increase in illegitimate emails has been driven by traditional pharmaceutical themed messages as well as a new technique – blank email messages.

According to the firm's lead researcher Samir Patel, cybercriminals are using blank emails merely to verify that a recipient's address is legitimate – the technique is known as a directory harvest attack.

Malicious attachments, such as zip, jpeg, jpg, and png files are also proliferating as well as the tried and tested scam of encouraging email users to print out a fake invoice for a supposed failed delivery.

Patel said: "In this pathetic effort of spreading malicious code, the spammer requests that recipients print out the attached invoice, which is actually an executable (.exe) file."

According to payment association APACS, phishing scams, which often attempt to get internet users to type their bank details into a fake website, are getting more sophisticated.

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