Virus & Spam Targeting Irish Businesses Down 5%

Irish company IE Internet recorded a drop in the amount of viruses and spam targeting business organizations in Ireland by 5% in July 2007. According to its latest statistics, the Irish managed company that hosts e-mailing indicated that the drop followed the trend of seasonal dips in the preceding years.

Every year, there is a decline in spam rates during the summer season, said Phelim O'Connell, managing director of IE Internet in a statement. The organization has been tracking spam mails since the year 2003. Silicon Republic published O'Connell's statement on August 1, 2007.

Despite the decline, IE Internet filtered a high level of spam at 63% from its customers who employed the firm professionally. A majority of the unsolicited commercial e-mails originated in the United States and France at the rate of 30% and 25% respectively. More notably, Irish IE Internet filtered 37.4% of total spam from the United States in June 2007.

Meanwhile, viruses also abated with the virus-infected e-mails dropping from 4.12% in the month of June to 3.61% in July 2007. This level was the lowest recorded since the month of January 2004.

IE Internet has indicated that W32/Zafi-B was circulating in the wild with highest levels since 2004. This worm spread through mass e-mails. The W32 family of worms can be delivered only through PCs with Windows operating system. They are disseminated through e-mail, P2P file-sharing programs and shared networks.

According to O'Connell, the key reason for virus spread is infected home PCs. During holidays, when computer systems lay inactive and e-mailing subsides, it slows down the rate of infection through virus.

Viruses have been showing a declining trend over the years. While in 2002, viruses would have been present in more than 20% of e-mails and today, we don't come across viruses infecting organization networks. Virus authors now prefer targeting home users to acquire control of their computers and then send out spam from those machines to businesses in massive bulks, said O'Driscoll, chief technical officer of IE Internet in a statement in July 2007. ENN published O'Driscoll's statement.

Related article: Virus Infects Through USB Drives

» SPAMfighter News - 8/13/2007