A quarter of all email includes a vicious link
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, Blog, Spyware, Spam, Security on
That is the perhaps unsurprising warning contained in the MessageLabs Intelligence 2007 Security Report which was published today. In a double whammy of bad news, MessageLabs warn that spam is the most dominant menace on the IT security agenda with spam levels reaching a whopping 84.6 percent across the course of the year, plus of course the fact that 25 percent of email comes complete with a malicious link to take you directly to something very nasty indeed.
Perhaps the most worrying bit of this is that it is a trend that has stormed along, every pun intended because the Storm botnet attacks have played a huge part in the statistics, with only 3 percent of email-borne viruses containing malicious links at the start of the year. To be honest, I find that figure rather low in any case. My mailbox would suggest, from both the malicious link emails I get and the messages from folk who have received them, the problem has been rife for some time. Still, this trend towards malicious links does serve to demonstrate that virus writers are continuing to develop strategies to distribute malware.
MessageLabs also flag up the dangers of social network targeted threats during 2007, warning that this could increase in 2008. Certainly during 2007 there were several significant waves of such targeted attacks which appeared on the radar. Indeed, the report suggests that levels rose from one attack per day in 2006 to more than 1,100 over a 16 hour period during September 2007. The most recent being in November when the first sector specific attack took place with almost 1,000 individual attacks aimed at the Financial Sector.
looking at the year by the numbers, the reports comes up with the following to brighten your day:
MessageLabs identified an average of 1,253 new web sites per day harboring malware, which equates to almost half a million new malicious web sites appearing throughout the year.
The average virus level for 2007 was 1 in 117.7 emails (0.8 percent) which reflects a fall of 0.6 percent since 2006 where levels averaged at 1 in 67.9 emails.
The number of phishing attacks rose to 1 in 156 emails across 2007, compared to 1 in 274.2 emails in 2006.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Comment by - October 26, 2009 on 7:31 am
We have to be alert to avoid this . It is really shocking that numbers of phishing attacks are gradually increasing . Thanks for sharing this.
Pingback by - January 20, 2010 on 11:40 am
[…] be a problem, to be honest, but unfortunately while the online world continues to be populated by link clicking idiots it will be. Not yet rated Loading […]
Make a comment
Tag cloud
Archives
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
Most commented posts
- 80 percent of viruses love Windows 7
165 comments
- Has Microsoft gone mental?
- Has the US Army declared war on Windows 7?
- Cuil frozen out: market share drops to next to nothing
- Xbox 360 FAIL
- The 24GB RAM Desktop is born
- Use old version of Windows instead of Linux, says teacher
- Microsoft reveals time-based licensing model
- How Marblecake Hacked Time
- Nexus Two - The Next Generation
Highest Rated Blog Posts
- Why ecommerce fails (100%)
- Google Chrome stands alone at PWN2OWN (100%)
- Betting on Hubdub technology (100%)
- Has Google gone insane as GMail goes back to beta? (100%)
- Chinese whispers as government implicated in UK hack attacks (100%)
- Crimeware toolkit targets 10,000 trusted sites (100%)
- Black Hat risk to migrating VMs (100%)
- Tough on cyber crime, tough on the causes of cyber crime (100%)
- Firefox 3, Beta 4, Enhancements 900, Tested 5 (100%)
- Has the US Army declared war on Windows 7? (100%)
