Fighting malware and spam

Spam hits record levels in October

Image-based pump-and-dumps add to inbox bloat.

Spam levels have continued to rise, defying general trends that would suggest a decreasing post-summer ratio, as more people at work means more legitimate mail. One monitor, managed security provider SoftScan, reports that spam averaged over 89% of email last month, with a single-day high of 96%, narrowly beating the previous record of 95.95% set in July.

Other spam watchers also recorded increases, with image spam, much of it pump-and-dump stock scams, growing to make up 30% of current spam volume, and almost 25% of total email traffic, according to a release from Secure Computing. A report from another managed security vendor, MX Logic, shows a 40% rise in email during the third quarter of this year, with a 77.4% spam rate in September, and a drop in the percentage of spam complying with CAN-SPAM regulations to a mere 0.27%, down from 3-4% last year.

Elsewhere, spyware specialist Sunbelt Software, among others, has warned of increasing use of botnets to distribute spam campaigns. McAfee has described a rise in the use of small offshore domains by spammers, while F-Secure, worried by domain auction sites selling on banking lookalike domain names to phishers, has suggested a dedicated top-level name for financial purposes.

01 November 2006

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