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Targeted Attacks Surged Once Again During October 2010

According to the recently released (October 26, 2010) Symantec's MessageLabs intelligence Report, targeted attacks have increased considerably ever since 2005, when they were first detected for the first time. From mere one to two weekly attacks in 2005, these attacks have crossed the number of 77 attacks per day in October 2010.

Further, according to the report, these attacks, for the very first time, targeted the retail sector badly during October 2010.

As a matter of fact, statistics revealed by the report highlights that 25% of these attacks targeted retail organizations during October 2010, which was an increase of around 0.5% from the monthly average of the past two years. That was around 516 of the total targeted attacks.

Furthermore, the number of targeted attacks intended at businesses in the retail segment significantly increased during October 2010. The number increased more than the monthly average of 1 in 1.26 Million, thereby enhancing the probability of an attack by nearly 6.3 times.

Commenting on the whole issue, Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst at Symantec Hosted Services stated that, this was the first time, when the retail sector had been victimized with low-level targeted e-mails. Other business segments such as, manufacturing, chem/pharm, and finance and public sector had been previously targeted more frequently, as reported by darkreading on October 26, 2010.

Some other findings of the recent report states that, during October 2010, the worldwide spam ratio in e-mail traffic from latest and formerly unidentified bad sources accounted for 87.5%, which was a reduction of around 4.2% points from September 2010.

Furthermore, the global ratio of e-mail originated viruses in e-mail traffic from both new and old bad sources was one in 221.9 e-mails (0.45%) during October (2010), a reduction of around .01 percentage points from September (2010). During October (2010), 23.1% of e-mail-originated infected links to malicious websites witnessed an increase of 15.5 percentage points from September (2010). During October (2010), phishing activities accounted for 1 in 488.0 e-mails (0.20%), a reduction of 0.06 percentage points from September (2010).

Related article: TRUSTe Certified Websites May Still Contain Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 11/5/2010

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