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China Leads In Targeted Malware Attacks
Mike Sachoff
Staff Writer
2010-03-26
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Symantec has released its March 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report detailing the origins of targeted malicious attacks.
 | | China Leads In Targeted Malware Attacks |  |
Analysis of the origins of the targeted attacks revealed the majority of malware sent this month, originated in the United States (36.6%) based on mail server location, but when analyzed by sender location, more targeted attacks actually originated in China (28.2%), Romania (21.1%) and United States (13.8%).
"When considering the true location of the sender rather than the location of the email server, fewer attacks are actually sent from North America than it would at first seem," said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst.
"A large proportion of targeted attacks are sent from legitimate webmail accounts which are located in the US and therefore, the IP address of the sending mail server is not a useful indicator of the true origin of the attack. Analysis of the sender's IP address, rather than the IP address of the email server reveals the true source of these targeted attacks."
Analysis of web security activity found 14.9 percent of all online malware intercepted was new in March, an increase of 1.6 percentage points since February. MessageLabs Intelligence also identified an average of 1,919 new websites per day hosting malware and other potentially unwanted programs such as spyware and adware, a decrease of 61.6 percent since February.
Other report highlights:
Spam: In March 2010, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources was 90.7 percent (1 in 1.10 emails), an increase of 1.5 percentage points since February.
Viruses: The global ratio of email-borne viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources was one in 358.3 emails (0.28 percent) in March, an decrease of 0.05 percentage points since February. In March, 16.8 percent of email-borne malware contained links to malicious websites, a decrease of 13.7 percentage points since February.
Phishing: In March, phishing activity was 1 in 513.7 emails (0.19 percent), a decrease of 0.02 percentage points since February. When judged as a proportion of all email-borne threats such as viruses and Trojans, the proportion of phishing emails had increased by 8.4 percentage points to 64.6 percent of all email-borne threats.
About the Author:
Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.
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