Spam Deluge Threatens Corporate Networks

Spam has been rising actively over the past couple of months. A majority of it is infiltrating the screening devices that had earlier proved quite dependable. It's a frustrating and dismal situation.

As per Postini's scrutiny of about 70 Billion emails amid September to November, there was almost 59% increase in unsolicited emails over the phase. Spam currently accounts for 91% of total email, and in the last one year, the daily level of spam jumped by 120%. The firm also witnessed a spectacular rise in the total email traffic with 10 Billion additional connections in October as compared to September.

"This spectacular growth in spam strikes on corporate networks has brought the cyberspace into a crisis" alleged Daniel Druker, Postini's executive vice president of marketing. "Spammers are progressively detrimental and innovative in their methods, and defense against spam has become a top priority matter again. Spam has developed from a device for bothersome cyber-terrorists and irritating vendors to one for illegal ventures."

Several reasons have compounded the circumstances and the common trait, regrettably, is that spammers are becoming very advanced.

Nowadays, spammers employ huge networks of seized computers known as "bot-nets" to start a strike. The strikes are dangerous - Postini follows over a million affected machines organizing spam and virus strikes daily, with 50,000 or more operating at any point.

The Stration virus, also called Warezov, was especially potent and destructive in October. This Trojan is crafted to hijack victim computers, collect email addresses and change these affected machines into spam-ejecting robots.

Spammers are constantly honing their skills. Graphic spam and MS Office text file spam presently comprises about 30% of total spam ascending from 2% in 2005.

Cyber-terrorists currently employ methods like reshuffling nearly 25 minute pictures into a HTML text or as GIF attachments to avoid optical character identification mechanism trying to evade email securities.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 11/10/2006