Irish E-Mailers Relieved at Dramatic Decline in Virus & Spam

Research by IE Internet suggests that there has been a decline in virus-infected e-mails in Ireland to an unprecedented level of 2.6% in the month of February 2008.

According to research by IE Internet, the growth rate of e-mails with virus infection in Ireland has dropped to an unprecedented low of 2.6% during February 2008 compared to 4.2% during January 2008. The figure is drastically different from earlier rates of 25% that the company recorded in 2002, when it began monitoring virus-laced e-mails for the first time.

Ken O-Driscoll, Chief Technical Officer, IE Internet, stated that there is being a continuous decline in virus attacks in the recent past. He said that for the industry as a whole, IE Internet is intercepting viruses in e-mails so well that the virus distributors are now seeking newer methods to attack people, as reported by ENN on March 7, 2008.

According to IE Internet, the countries from where spam to Irish inboxes mainly originated are the US with 51.91% of total spam, China with 21.32%, Poland with 13.71%, Germany with 5.19% and Japan with 5.17%. And, the key viruses hitting the e-mail users included W32/Netsky.BR@mm with 17.21% of virus attacks, W32/Zafi.B@mm at 15.85%, HTML/I-Frame at 7.92% and W32/Zafi.D@mm at 6.49%.

The study also found that although the spam rates declined from 63% in January 2008 to 59.7% in February 2008, cyber criminals did not send luring e-mails using Valentine's Day theme.

According to O'Driscoll, the reduction in viruses to nearly negligible amounts truly proved that the industey is doing a good job by defending its customers against viruses, as reported by Siliconrepublic on March 10, 2008.

Therefore, people spreading viruses now have to look for other channels to infect systems. A common method is being observed in e-mail traffic is the use of the 'I-frame' label. This tag, although is not a virus, but it leads the user to create a new Window at the back of all displays, which then executes a virus on his system.

However, IE Internet indicated to computer users that they should not expect the new tactics to lead to a long-term decline in spam volumes. spammers would likely keep on flooding mailboxes but now with individual attacks spread over a long time. So, in efforts to escape detection while continuing with more assaults, they are silent.

Related article: IRS Cautions Taxpayers of Recent Email Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 3/15/2008