A massive spam campaign to manipulate share prices has led to a 30% rise in spam in the last 24 hours.

Security experts at Sophos found that the amount of global spam detected in the last 24 hours was up by 30%, all due to a single huge spam campaign.

The spam messages have been received around the world and come with an attached PDF file that encourages the recipient to buy shares in a company called Prime Time Group Inc, which sells wireless products.

Spammers will have already bought stock in the company at a cheap price, and are using a spam campaign to attempt to artificially inflate the price before selling off their stock at a profit.

Spam campaigns like this that attempt to manipulate stock prices now account for 25% of all spam, but the scale of this particular campaign is extraordinary.

E-mail users are advised not to respond to spam mails like these or to open attachments in unsolicited messages.

www.sophos.com

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