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Australia Again With Escalated Spam

According to Security Company Symantec's MessageLabs, which published a new report titled, "Intelligence Report 2011," the month of February 2011 witnessed one of the unprecedented periods of junk e-mails in Australia, with the figure as the highest over the past twelve months. ComputerWorld published this on March 3, 2011.

Notably, the above differs from the reports for Q4-2010 when security companies stated that spam volumes dropped because some programs had been shutdown. But as botnets appeared, spam volumes rose once again. Reportedly, the botnet namely Zeus was most prolific before going underground following detentions inside the UK and USA in 2010.

Furthermore, as per the 2011 MessageLabs report, Bredolab was behind a minimum of 10.3% of the entire e-mail traffic that carried a virus, which MessageLabs Intelligence detected during February 2011.

Additionally, there had been more frequency of malevolent files together with PDF documents, the format which's most popular for distribution of malware worldwide, the report highlights.

Stated Senior Analyst Paul Wood at MessageLabs, during 2009, about 52.6% of personalized assaults employed PDF exploits in relation to 65% during 2010, accounting for a 12.4% rise. He added that the company's research showed that by mid-2011, there was a possibility of having PDF-based assaults driven from 76% of targeted malicious programs. ComputerWorld reported this on March 3, 2011.

Moreover, MessageLabs discloses that the maximum number of attacks through phishing e-mails remains in South Africa, with one in 32.5 messages getting identified as a spoofed message and therefore blocked.

Meanwhile, spam contributed an 81% share in the country's total electronic mail. Generally, during February 2011, there was a 2.7% rise in the worldwide spam while at present that rate is 81%. MyBroadband.co.za published this on March 2, 2011.

Stated Wood that spam distribution had slowed down during December 2010-January 2011; however, currently, there had been regrouping of the botnet herders who developed improved systems. Modern spam came increasingly like a combination of e-mail payload and diversion of Web-surfers onto genuine websites, which had malicious software, he added.

Significantly, all of the assaults utilized ZIP attachments, which had a crafty .exe file containing the malicious software.

Related article: Australian Blogger Uses Spam To Boost Blog

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