Spam careens out of control in June

Stan Beer
Sunday, 09 July 2006 18:27

Business IT - Security

According to a newly released report, the incidence of spam mail has once again careened out of control, jumping 6.9% in June to a massive 64.8% of all emails sent in June.

Email and web security provider, MessageLabs, announced the results of its MessageLabs Intelligence Report for June and the second quarter of 2006. According to the report, the global ratio of spam in email traffic rose to 64.8% in June, an increase of 6.9% over the previous month. In addition, the research found a growing trend towards not only a convergence of threats across the different communications channels, such as email, IM and web, but also a merging of the cyber-criminals’ information gathering and attack techniques, such as spyware, spam, viruses and phishing, as the ‘bad guys’ seek new and more effective means to exploit their targets.

“The increased convergence of threats across email, web, and IM combined with the increased sophistication of techniques is an interesting new development. Today, we see a growing number of emails and IMs containing links to websites where malware or spyware is automatically downloaded, as opposed to the traditional method where the message itself has a piece of malware attached. So, a harmless looking email can quickly become a web threat,” said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer, MessageLabs. “Just as we once viewed spammers and virus writers as two separate forces, which then rapidly merged, we are now also seeing spyware distribution adding to this mix. For example, we have seen more evidence of spammers employing spyware to make their campaigns more effective. This leaves businesses with the increasingly complex challenge of securing company data and intellectual property without sacrificing important avenues of employee communication.”

MessageLabs research indicates spammers are increasingly turning to new mediums such as mobile text messaging, Web-based instant messaging, weblogs and social networking communities such as MySpace.com, to bypass email-based anti-spam measures and more effectively target recipients based on their age, location and other characteristics. This trend is a rising cause of concern for IT managers who are attempting to implement greater controls and protect Internet access within their business without resorting to policies that block employees ability to communicate.

In June, the global ratio of viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources destined for valid recipients, was 1 in 101 (1%), a decrease of 0.5% from the previous month. For the quarter, the virus rate was 1 in 68 (1.5%), a decrease of 0.7% from the quarter prior, and a drop of 1.4% compared to the same period in 2005. Despite the downward trend, MessageLabs found an alarming six-fold increase in highly targeted trojan attacks specifically designed to appropriate intellectual property from businesses and organisations. Such attacks, though rare, have risen to approximately one per day compared to one or two per week during the same period in 2005.

June showed a decrease of 0.12% in the proportion of phishing attacks compared with the previous month, with one in 531 emails (0.19%) containing a phishing attack. For the quarter, one in 377.4 emails (0.26%) contained a phishing attack, down 0.02% from 1 in 356 (0.28%) in the quarter prior. In spite of recent declines, however, phishing attacks continue to become more focused as increasing numbers of criminal groups shift their attention from creating malware to phishing. This is evidenced by the quarter-on-quarter increase of 6.5% in the proportion of phishing attacks judged as a proportion of all email-borne threats. Phishing emails accounted for 18.6% of all malicious emails intercepted by MessageLabs in the second quarter. MessageLabs continues to observe a decline in the “scatter-gun” approach where emails are sent in large numbers in favor of more subtle, selectively targeted attacks.

Geographic Trends:

·     Israel continues to be the world’s top spam target, with spam representing 75.9% of Israel’s email traffic, up 11.9% since May.

·     Ireland saw the greatest rise since the previous month, increasing 14.1% to a spam rate of 59.4%.

·     The month’s sharpest fall was seen in Spain, where spam represents 24.8% of all emails.

·     For viruses, India remains the nation most under attack in the aftermath of the Nyxem.D outbreak in February. June is the fourth consecutive month India has topped the virus chart.

·     Germany enjoyed the sharpest fall in virus attacks during June, despite its heightened global attention due to the World Cup football competition.

Vertical Trends:

·     The Chemical and Pharmaceutical sector remained at the top of the spam chart for the second month in a row, up an additional 11.1%.

·     Virtually all industries saw spam emails increase or remain roughly flat, with only the Public Sector observing a very slight 0.3% decrease.

·     Business Support Services topped the virus chart and saw a 7.8 percent increase in malicious email traffic, while the Education sector enjoyed the largest decrease in viruses, down 1.5% compared to the previous month.