Commtouch, a company that “is dedicated to protecting the integrity of the world’s most widespread form of communication, e-mail,” released a report last week that indicates that spam reached a new record in the third quarter of this year.
According to the report, titled “Q3 2007 Email Threats Trend Report,” global spam levels reached a ridiculous all time high of 95% of all e-mails during the third quarter. During attack peaks, spam messages with links to malicious sites account for up to 8% of all global e-mail traffic.
Image spam has decreased to less than 5% of all spam e-mails, according to the report. This is a drastic decline from the 30% figure from the previous quarter.
PDF spam was frequently sent in July, when it made up 10-15% of all spam, but has since dropped off and now accounts for 3-5% of all spam. The U.S. accounted for 24% of all PDF spam sites.
Pharmaceutical-related spam messages were the most popular, accounting for 30% of all spam, while sexual enhancer-related messages were the second most frequently sent spam, accounting for 23% of all spam during the quarter.
The report indicates that blended spam has become more popular. This type of spam utilizes zombie computers to send out spam e-mails that do not append the typical malicious attachments. They do, however, include links to sites that contain and download malicious software onto the user’s computer.
Commtouch Labs found that during an average blended spam attack, 1,500 malicious URLs were recognized per hour of the outbreaks. During these peaks, this blended spam that links to malicious sites accounted for 8% of all spam traffic.
The lack of a conspicuous attachment makes these spam messages trickier and more likely to entice an unknowing user into clicking on the links contained. They are also much more likely to slip past anti-virus and anti-spam filters.
Sources:
http://www.commtouch.com/downloads/Commtouch_2007_Q3_Email_Threats.pdf
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/10/19/spam-hits-new-high
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