Record Number of IM Attacks in May

Postini, a company that provides Integrated Message Management technology and services, announced last week that the month of May saw the most corporate Instant Messaging (IM) attacks ever. Corporate IM traffic increased 138% from the prior month, and IM attacks jumped 500%.

Obviously this shows that hackers view IM as a very vulnerable target, and that companies should further the measures they are taking to filter out any unwelcome IMs. This objective becomes increasingly important as more and more businesses are utilizing IM programs as an important medium of communication.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was the target of most of the attacks, while Yahoo! and MSN’s respective IM programs also saw their share of attacks. Some instances of malware attacked all three major IM programs.

Andrew Lockhart, senior director of marketing at Postini, said, “What we are seeing is the ongoing trend that we observed through all of last year, that the bad guys are more and more using IM to deliver spyware, worms, and viruses.”

He added, “The fact that IM messages more than doubled in just one month shows the rate companies are adopting IM as a mainstream business communications tool. The sheer volume of IM attacks is a dramatic demonstration that we’re in an environment where hackers, knowing that most organizations are still unprotected against IM malware, are rapidly adopting IM for their attacks. That being said, IM attacks are still only a fraction of the number of email attacks, so it’s important companies keep up their guard on both fronts.”

Postini processed more than 25 billion email messages in May, which was a 13% increase from April. More than 86% of all this traffic consisted of unwanted or malicious content.

The most frequent viruses blocked were MyTob variants, Netsky, Swen, Mydoom, and LovGate.

Sources:

http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article.php/3611796

http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/security/article.php/3612511