The report combines results from the Symantec.cloud MessageLabs Intelligence Report and the Symantec State of Spam & Phishing Report. 

According to Symantec, the turbulent market drives “pump-and-dump” stock scams. Spammers cause an artificial rise in stock price and sell their shares. Ending the campaign reduces interest in stock and drives stock back to original low price.

“Scammers can make substantial profits in a matter of days with a well-executed pump-and-dump spam. In the current turbulent environment many people may be convinced to invest in stocks that the scammers claim will benefit from the market turbulence,” said Paul Wood, senior intelligence analyst, Symantec.cloud.

Additional analysis revealed that there were as many new boot time malware threats in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years.  

“MBR infections offer great scope for deep infection and control of computers, which makes the idea attractive to malware creators. Contemporary MBR infection methods are a fairly complex affair usually executed by highly skilled individuals,” Wood said

In August 2011, the global ratio of spam in email traffic declined to 75.9 percent. However, phishing activity increased in August. Many increases are coming from attacks related to major brand names related to Apple’s iDisk as well as a variety of Brazilian companies and services, including financial brand names and social networking.

Abeng Roland, a member of the Cameroon and American bar associations, told VOA the rampant surge in the reports and complaints on scamming for the last six months prompted him to send the minister of posts and telecommunications a report on the growing list of victims.

Speaking about the complaints filed by foreigners and investors interested in buying from Cameroon, Roland said the scams are affecting the country’s image.

“It’s becoming so alarming that we need to do something,” he told VOA.

Western diplomatic missions in Cameroon, such as the U.S. Embassy, advise their nationals not to conduct business on the web. However, those warnings are not always taken seriously. A few years ago, a British national who came to Cameroon to track down scammers who stole millions of pounds from him was found dead in the Yaounde, the capital.

The government’s slow response to the problem has resulted in more online criminality, Roland said, and more young people are drawn in by the lack of punishment. Some have hijacked official government websites, and others are setting up sites claiming to belong to government officials, he added.

Roland said there’s been more talk than action from the government’s side, and “we need action or else hardworking Cameroonians . . . will never reap the fruits of our labor.”

The government is in the process of drafting new legislation that would authorize it to establish a cyber police force by the end of this year. The bill would also define major cyber crimes, including “child pornography, infringements to human dignity, the propagation of false rumors and intrusion into the banking system,” VOA said.

Charles Anderson told The Register he received an email from a “Gladlord Mohammed” informing him that “i have being paid $200,000.00 in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employers.”

However, Mohammed continued: “i have followed you closely for one week and three days now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusation.” Thus, Mohammed had decided to pass up the contract on Anderson–if he agreed to hand over “$50,000.00 to the account i will provide for you.”

Once Anderson had paid money and met with Mohammed, the hired gun said he would hand over the tape that contained the information on the contracted kill. That information would “be enough evidence for you to take him to court (if you wish to), then the balance will be paid later,” Mohammed wrote.

Anderson was told to keep quiet and not contact the FBI or the police. The assassin reminded him,”I have your picture with me and other vital information. I was hired with my team from Yemen Arab Republic down here. So you don’t need to ask any question. Deal/No Deal?”

Anderson, a software engineer, concluded the email was a scam and simply pressed Gmail’s “Report Spam” button.

“It’s the first scam I’ve ever received that tried to intimidate me into handing over money, rather than just playing on my greed and stupidity,” he told The Register. “Is this the start of a trend, or have I just been lucky so far?”

While many viruses work to surreptitiously disable security software, this new technique relies on social engineering to convince users to disable or delete products themselves. If a user fails to follow the rouge software’s advice, the program attempts to delete security products from Microsoft, AVG, Zone Labs and Norton.

“In this example, a warning is displayed that the Symantec  antivirus software is “uncertified” and will hamper the computer’s performance,” according to Symantec. “The user is left with no other option than clicking OK, which initiates the uninstall process. Even if the user clicks the “close” button, the uninstaller of the antivirus product still executes.”

Users who attempt to download the files receive a prompt to download “update codecs,” which are actually Trojan infected files. The trap appears to rely entirely on social engineering and is not related to a flaw in QuickTime, Apple told researchers with TrendMicro.

Social-networking sites, especially, are breeding grounds for cyber criminals who trick unsuspecting victims into revealing bank account information and other details. In addition to identity-theft crimes, child predators often use social-networking sites to find and communicate with future victims and other pedophiles, Snow said.

In addition to targeting children on the Internet, cyber crooks use various methods to steal money from online users. Snow detailed a recent scheme that involves a scammer getting access to an unsuspecting user’s email account or social-networking site. The fraudster, masquerading as the account holder, sends messages to the user’s friends, saying he has been robbed of his credit cards, passport, money and cellphone, and needs money immediately. Before realizing the message is from a criminal, the friends wire money to an overseas account without confirming the claim.

Speaking of how cyber fraudsters use data mining on social-networking sites to collect sensitive information about their victims, Snow noted how this can be done either on a large or a small scale. In a large-scale data-mining scheme, a cyber criminal may send out a “getting to know you quiz” to social-networking site users. While the answers to these questions are seemingly innocent, they often imitate the same questions asked by financial institutions or email account providers when an individual has forgotten his or her password. Thus, an email address and the answers to the quiz questions can give the cyber criminal enough information to intrude victims’ bank or email account.

The impact on individuals and commerce suffer from cyber crime can be substantial, with consequences ranging from a inconvenience to financial ruin, Snow said.

“The potential for considerable profits is enticing to young criminals, and has resulted in the creation of a large underground economy known as the cyber underground,” he said. “The cyber underground is a pervasive market governed by rules and logic that closely mimic those of the legitimate business world, including a unique language, a set of expectations about its members’ conduct, and a system of stratification based on knowledge and skill, activities, and reputation.”

Detailing efforts by the FBI to combat cyber crime, Snow spoke of the bureau’s four-fold cyber crime mission: to stop the most serious cyber criminals; to identify and combat online sexual predators; to counteract operations targeting U.S. intellectual property; and to dismantle national and transnational organized criminal gangs involved in Internet fraud.

Acknowledging the bureau cannot combat the cyber threat alone, Snow spoke of partnerships with federal, state, local and international law-enforcement agencies, as well as with the private sector and academia. At the federal level, the FBI leads the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force as a multiagency national focal point for coordinating, integrating, and sharing information related to cyber-threat investigations. The FBI also works side by side with not-for-profit organizations, Snow said.

“Working closely with others, sharing information, and leveraging all available resources and expertise, the FBI and its partners have made significant strides in combating cyber crime,” he said. “Clearly, there is more work to be done, but through a coordinated approach we have become more nimble and responsive in our efforts to bring justice to the most egregious offenders.”

The scams, purporting to show clips of Buzz and Woody talking, send users to malware-infected and useless sites. Some even claim to offer games related to Toy Story 3.

“Most of the surveys we see tend to ask a lot of questions that reveal plenty of information about the individual filling them in, and you probably don’t want your kids giving some random third party lots of information about Dad or whatever,” Christopher Boyd of Sunbelt writes in a blogpost. “Sites asking to install programs in return for the Toy Story game or movie should be avoided, along with any promises that sound too good to be true on Youtube.”

Called scareware because they scare consumers into buying bogus anti-virus programs, this type of scam has become one of the fastest-growing types of online frauds, according to the FBI. Instead of removing the supposed virus, the programs often do either nothing at all or they install malware onto computers.

Panda Security estimates scareware brings in some $34 million a month in revenue for industrious cyber gangs. Perfect example: the Ukraine-based company Innovative Market. In May, the company was charged with running a $100+ million scareware business that scammed Internet users in more than 60 countries. According to the indictment, proceeds from the sales of the scareware were deposited into bank accounts controlled by the scammers and their accomplices throughout the world and then transferred to European accounts.

To reach victims en masse, cyber criminals often employ botnets to push out their scareware. They will also pose as legitimate Internet security companies and buy ads on other websites—called “malvertising”—but when consumers click on the ads to purchase the products, they are redirected to websites controlled by the scammers.

Although any day or time is good enough for scammers to plug their bogus products, holidays and popular events are common occasions exploited by cyber criminals. Most recently, scammers poisoned Fourth of July web queries, according to USA Today. And with the ongoing “Twilight” hysteria, scammers know how to work the popularity of the series to their advantage by tainting “Twilight”-related search results with malicious links that trigger programs promoting fake anti-virus protection.

The World Cup has also proven to be another recent popular topic for scammers to abuse. According to PandaLabs, scareware called MySecurityEngine was being pushed through FIFA-related search terms. The fake software changed the desktop setting of the victim to display fake security alerts and take over the browser to direct the user to useless sites. It also installed malicious files and downloaded itself automatically onto the victim’s computer, making it hard to remove the malware.

To protect consumers from scareware, the FBI urges the use of a legitimate, up-to-date anti-virus program.

Cyber criminals are posting fake video clips, infected downloads and spoilers, according to The Register. Fans who click the links are invited to fill out a quiz to “unlock the content” which only gives the scammers revenue, rather than providing actual content.

False websites have also appeared in order to take advantage of the hot trend. Some charge as much as $35 for users to download software that is freely available on the Internet.

“Don’t fall for any of these offers, whether they take the form of survey spam or websites that want you to cough up for some P2P action – you’ll only regret it in the end,” writes Christopher Boyd, a researcher with Sunbelt.

Far from a novel idea, phishers have been using social networks for years to find new recruits. Now, the scammers have created Facebook groups specifically dedicated to the work-at-home scams that often serve as recruitment schemes for money mules. One such group has almost 225,000 members on Facebook, according to Kaspersky researchers.

The criminals promise high earnings for minimal efforts: $6,000 per month for only 18 hours of work per week. Job responsibilities often involve accepting deposits and wire transfers of thousands of dollars a day, then transferring the money to other accounts designated by the phishing gang.

Although the money mule can make fast cash relatively easy, it is usually they who are most likely to be discovered, arrested and prosecuted. Sometimes, the money mules do not know what the end result of their activities is; all they know is they are transferring money from one account to another.