Spam Grows Up in 2006, Eyes a Big 2007

MessageLabs recently released its 2006 Annual MessageLabs Intelligence Report, which discusses its analysis of the spam, virus, and phishing attacks in 2006, and looks forward to 2007.

The report indicated that the annual average spam rate for 2006 was 86.2%. Botnets were responsible for 80% of all spam, and 63.4% of all spam came from new sources. The key tactic that spammers used in 2006 was called “geek spam,” which involves the inclusion of technology-oriented buzzwords in the message bodies of the spam. This allowed these e-mails to dodge spam filters.

Viruses had a relatively quiet year with drastically decreased activity in 2006. Besides the Nyxem.E virus in January, MessageLabs did not see any major virus attacks this year. The annual average virus rate in 2006 was about 1.47% in 2006, compared to the 2.76% rate in 2005.

Phishing attacks, on the other hand, grew in 2006. One in every 274.2 e-mails was phishing related. About 24.8% of all malicious e-mails caught by MessageLabs were phishing attacks. This figure was only 13.1% in 2005.

Israel was a hotbed for spam this year with an average spam rate of 75.2% for 2006. India was a close second with a rate of 75.1%, while Hong Kong ranked third with a rate of 71.7%.

The U.S. saw its average spam rate decline considerably from 77.0% in 2005 to 63.5% in 2006. Canada also saw a huge drop from 77.0% last year to 55.5% this year. Both of these North American countries had the highest average spam rate in 2005.

In terms of the types of spam received by e-mail users in the U.S., medication was the most popular with about 97.4% of respondents indicating that they had received this type of spam, according to Reflexion. Shopping-related spam was received by 96.7% of respondents, body enhancement-related spam was received by 96.1%, pornography-related spam was received by 94.7%, and gambling was received by 88.2%.

MessageLabs expects threats to “converge” in 2007, virus rates to continue their decline, ransomware to grow in prominence, and increased targeting of spam messages, particularly to finance and legal sectors.

Sources:

http://www.messagelabs.com/publishedcontent/publish/
about_us_dotcom_en/news___events/press_releases/DA_174397.html

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