The holiday season is upon us, bringing excitement (and presents) for kids of all ages. Naturally, cybercriminals are abusing the spirit of giving for their own evil ends. We’re seeing typical spam – weight loss, financial scams, and pharmacy offers – wrapped in the Christmas spirit.

First off – there are the spam subjects covering every aspect of Christmas and touching on New Year as well:  

• ca$h to your door before christmas! tax-free!
• christmas inf-ormation
• date !for the christmas party
• earn extra money this christmas….view attachment
• earn extra xmas cash
• get your $10k or more before christmas !
• i f-ound all christmas presents now
• microsoft xmas promotion winner!!!
• xmas lottery promo 2010 edition….
• fast christmas cash!
• xmas mystery shopper wanted__p1
• meet you at th|e new years party

And some email samples: Check out this one, asking us to spend our holiday bonus participating in their stock scam.

Here’s another one appealing to the physical results of the holiday season – weight gain and a desire to prove our attractiveness to our partners.

And, of course, using topical Christmas text to fool content based anti-spam systems. This pharmaceutical example mentions the IPad, Samsung Galaxy and Christmas.

Our first Christmas spam post – many more to come!