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Spam Down As Scammers Save Up For Christmas
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2008-10-07
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In general, malware and spam declined a bit in September. Don't get your hopes up. With the holiday season approaching, digital ne'er-do-wells will be ramping up production.
 | | Spam Down As Scammers Save Up For Christmas |  |
MessageLabs released its Intelligence Report for September and Q3 2008. The amount of spam battering inboxes was actually down eight percent last month. MessageLabs credits the decline to scammer-haven ISP Intercage's boot from the Internet. Close to 80 percent of Intercage's clientele was thought to be malicious attackers.
Addresses on Intercage's network range were being used to host command and control channels for botnets," said Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst, MessageLabs. "In disrupting these botnets, the level of spam activity toward the end of September was severely impaired. But we don't expect this dip to last long. This time of year is notorious for increased levels of spam activity as spammers ramp up for the holiday season."
MessageLabs doesn't want you to get too excited though. Spammers will no doubt regroup in time to hammer out their holiday campaigns. Besides, if spam and malware went away completely, what would become of all these security companies?
Here are some other fun statistics:
45.9 percent of all intercepted web-based malware was a new kind.
On average, 3,660 malicious websites are created daily, an increase of almost 22.8 percent between August and September.
70 percent of spam in September was from new or previously unknown sources, which was actually an eight percent decline from August. Spam overall was down 1.1 percent in Q3, compared to the same period in 2007.
Email-borne viruses from new sources also declined by 0.4 percent, while links to malicious sites declined by over 11 percent.
Technically, phishing was up slightly in September-by 0.16 percent-but when judged in proportion to other threats like viruses and Trojans, phishing attacks were down by as much as 45.7 percent, reaching the lowest levels since Q2 2006.
Hong Kong, with almost 80 percent of email there being spam, is the most spammed country in the world.
Manufacturing is the most spammed industry sector with 79.7 percent of email being spam, and Real Estate showed the sharpest increase, rising by over four percent to 71.7 percent.
Matching other declines, Automotive spamming decreased the most, dropping by almost 15 percent to 68.9 percent.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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