MessageLabs Released its 2008 June Spam Report

The monthly spam report of MessageLabs released on July 10, 2005 revealed that the Swiss users received almost 10% more of spam than an average Internet user.

MessageLabs also claimed that users are complaining about the number of spam emails attacking their mail accounts every day. Further, the security vendor informed that instead of US, it is Switzerland that is flooded with maximum number of spam and is the most frequently attacked country. In June 2008, the spam level in the US touched 68.8%.

The statistics in MessageLabs report revealed that during June 2008, 76.5% of the total mails were found to be spam, while the overall average in the past 6 months was estimated to be around 74.5%. Therefore, there is a wide disparity between spam sent to various industries and countries.

MessageLabs also commented that Switzerland received 84.8% of mails as spam, leaving behind the traditional leader in this section, Hong Kong with 74.5%. The leading five countries include France with 82.1%, Israel with 80.1% and Austria with 79.6%. The estimation for Canada stood at 77.8% of the total spam, while UK received 74.3% of all mails during June 2008.

Moreover, the report also divulged that manufacturing is the most frequently attacked by hackers with 82.9%. Retail and education comprised 80.1% and 80.4% respectively. Further, the share of financial section was at 71.5%.

Also, in June 2008, the political and celebrity events were a favorite among the hackers. MessageLabs cited the example of campaign running by Democratic Presidential Barack Obama. The spam was titled "SCANDAL ROCKS OBAMA AS LURID SEX VIDEO LEAKED" and was widely circulated in the US.

The company also informed that other kinds of spam featuring obscene videos of Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson and Christina Aguilera compelled users to watch harmful file, video.exe, hosted on a hacked domain.

MessageLabs also said that new harmful software removal techniques have emerged which focused on attacking and deteriorating Storm infections. They are responsible for the immediate decrease in Storm-infected systems. They are estimated at 100,000 hacked systems, but claimed that they would hacked soon which leads to yet another disaster.

Related article: Mozilla Rules Out Bug in Its Firefox

» SPAMfighter News - 7/28/2008