Symantec has just released its monthly spam report for July, and it shows the appearance of new ingenious ways that hijackers use in order to either sell products through spam or infect the targeted machines. The latest artifice that tricks people into clicking on images that lead to webpages hosting malicious content is a story about a fictional World War III, which has allegedly begun after the U.S. invaded Iran.

"Third World War has begun," "US soldiers occupied Iran", "Negotiations between USA and Iran ended in War" are just some of the subjects of the malicious emails detected by Symantec. The bodies of the tricky emails incorporate the continuation of what is meant to sound like a breaking piece of news: "Just now US Army's Delta Force and US Air Force have invaded Iran. Approximately 20000 soldiers crossed the border into Iran and broke down the Iran's Army resistance. The video..." The incomplete sentence makes unwary people click on an image that shows an exploding bomb. Those who fall for the trick get infected with Trojan.Peacomm.

In July, phishing attacks concentrated on a rather unusual approach - they tried to convince people to subscribe to an alcohol or drugs rehabilitation program. "Spammers are constantly trying new tactics to try and coerce recipients into opening a spam message so that they can obtain personal information from end users. In this particular example, they are trying to target individuals who are not in good health, in the hopes that they will act on this spam message and give away their personal details." informs the Symantec report.

Other spam messages were based on people's interest in popular subjects, such as the two presidential candidates - Obama and McCain, the Olympics, natural products, casinos or economic matters. The areas of origin and the percentage that shows the contribution of different countries to global spam indicate the U.S. as the leader, with 27%. The following positions are occupied by Turkey and Russia, both with 7%, Brazil - 4%, and China, Thailand, India, Poland, Unites Kingdom, South Korea, each of them with the same input to world's total spam of 3%.