Symantec Issues its MessageLabs Intelligence Report for June 2009

Security company Symantec Corp., on June 29, 2009, issued its 'June 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report,' as per the reports from MarketWatch on June 29, 2009.

In the report, Symantec highlights that there has been no change in the spam level since May 2009, which remained at 90.4% mainly because the huge and extremely active botnet, Cutwail, experienced long hours of shutdown after Pricewert LLC, an Internet Service Protocol located in California, was closed on June 5, 2009.

Overall, botnets were responsible for 80% of the total spam, according to the research by Symantec. In fact, the security company comments that it is apparent that there will be a decline in botnet activity in the near future.

Along with botnets, MessageLabs Intelligence for June 2009 discovered that with respect to instant messages, one in every 78 web-links was malicious.

Paul Wood, Senior Analyst at MessageLabs Intelligence, says that organizations and enterprises need to face the challenge of growing instant messaging which is mainly an outcome of the Captcha cracking method that allows conmen to create fake e-mail accounts and then use them to redirect victims to malevolent Internet sites, as reported by ComputerWeekly on June 29, 2009.

Moreover, other interesting observations that Symantec highlights in its June 2009 report is the growing number of image spam. Understandably, earlier during 2009, security experts had observed that this kind of spam was re-emerging following its near extinction during 2008. According to MessageLabs, it is responsible for 8%-10% of the entire spam that has been intercepted.

Additionally, 10.4% of virus infected e-mails carried web-links that connected to malevolent sites, accounting for a rise of 3.4% from May 2009, reports Symantec.

The amount of fraudulent i.e. phishing e-mails in comparison to Trojan and virus laced e-mails increased 6.4% to 96.1% of the total e-mail-borne malware intercepted during June 2009.

In conclusion, Symantec states that there may not be any decline in cyber crime, as bot-herders, spammers, malware purveyors, phishers and all such miscreants continue to put their maximum efforts to dispatch malware and spam.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/15/2009