Spammers Especially Targeting Small Businesses

Vasco Data Security International an Internet Security Company recently conducted a study, according to which, spam is inundating the Internet while attacks related to financial matters are growing rapidly, with SMBs (small-and-medium sized businesses) in particular coming under the siege of spammers.

Reports Vasco that the 700 SMBs in Europe it studied received 120m spam mails during January 2009. And with the deployment of a pre-scanning tool, an extra 40m malicious e-mail were blocked during February 2009, while 70m e-mails that were not blocked continued to be spam that successfully dodged the scanning tool.

Said Product Manager Kurt Berghs of Vasco that despite the scanning engine, 93% of the recorded 70m e-mails continued to be spam. InternetNews.com published this on May 28, 2009.

Additionally, Vasco also discovered an increasing number of employees using the Internet for surfing. According to the company, this behavior amounts to a high 32%, while the dependency of employees on the Internet is increasingly exposing them to phishing, spamming and various other Internet frauds. Also, a twofold increase has been observed in the total number of website closures suggesting that a large number of websites have turned malevolent that are delivering malware.

Moreover, social-networking websites especially put IT administrators of small businesses in a dilemma. Attacks against such sites in the recent times have spoiled their reputation among the security community, with companies retaining data such as Vasco suggesting that companies should enforce rules for social-networking activities.

Further, the volume of malicious content embedded within e-mails has become threefold in comparison to 2008, with a constantly rising percentage of it being money-related. In truth, Vasco's conclusions match with those of MessageLabs Intelligence report, published in the end week of May 2009, according to which, 89.7% of the total malware related to phishing attacks.

Additionally, the security company reports of a constant rise in Banking and phishing trojans while the more typical worms such as Bagle and Netsky continue as before. Also, hackers seem to be unaffected with the ongoing economic crisis as they are concentrating even more on stealing passwords and hacking into accounts for theft of users' money.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 6/6/2009