Targeted Assaults Rose during April 2011; Symantec

Symantec Corp., on April 26, 2011, declared its MessageLabs Intelligence Report for April 2011, according to which, the company tapped 85 targeted assaults every single day, the maximum from March 2009 when it was 107 daily before the start of the G20 Summit in London during 2010.

Furthermore, the report as well disclosed that condensed URLs had gotten more-and-more popular lately, since they were getting utilized for enticing users towards following ad web-links, a process called click-fraud.

Also, during April 2011, there was a single e-mail to 168.6 e-mails that carried malicious software, while targeted assaults were responsible for about 0.02% of all malware, suggesting a 10.5% rise over a 6-month period. And, during October 2010, about 77 targeted assaults were stopped daily.

Stated Senior Analyst Paul Wood of Symantec's MessageLabs Intelligence, the direction in which targeted assaults moved indicated there could be a seasonal style of the assaults as they appeared higher during the particular month. Net-security.org published this on April 26, 2011.

Wood further stated that since many countries had their financial year closing in April, it was as well probable that cyber-criminals utilized the time very well for seeking company data regarding their financial performance, while a well designed assault might simply act as the method for accomplishing that.

Amazingly, the latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report as well outlines that during April 2011, 13.2% of malware-laced e-mails carried web-links to malevolent sites, representing a 50% decline from March 2011. The reason attributed is mainly an enormous rise in the Zeus, Bredolab, SpyEye and Sasfis Trojans that were behind over half of all malicious programs. Ordinarily these malware come via zipped attachments instead of web-links, and because the assaults were large in number they relatively reduced the number of assaults that utilized web-links.

Additionally, the report finds that in U.K, malware was found in one out of every 86.2 e-mails during April 2011. Elsewhere, in Denmark e-mail-borne viruses accounted for one in 647.9 e-mails, in USA it was one in 311.6 e-mails, in Holland - one in 311.2 e-mails, in Germany -one in 277.5 e-mails, and in Canada -one in 201.8 e-mails.

Related article: TRUSTe Certified Websites May Still Contain Malware

» SPAMfighter News - 5/4/2011