Spam Resurrection in 2008
If you received 45,000 spam messages in 2008, you’re an average unprotected user, according to Google, which drew its data from the Postini Message Security network.
The search giant posted its “2008: The year in spam” findings on its official enterprise blog on Monday. In it, Google discussed the fallout of the McColo shutdown in November.
“In November 2008 a large source of the world’s spam, the McColo network, was taken offline,” noted Amanda Kleha, part of Google’s Message Security Team. “Prior to that, spam levels had been holding relatively constant. But when McColo went offline, we saw spam drop by 70% compared with previous levels. However, spammers are recovering with vigor.”
The blog post indicated that spam levels have increased 156 percent since November 2008, and predicted that spam totals will reach pre-McColo levels within a few months.
According to Google, the highest level of spam occurred on April 23, when 194 spam messages were blocked per user, on average.
With regards to virus attacks, the volume of these threats increased six-fold during the second half of 2008 compared to the first half.
Google notes that a popular e-mail attack scheme involved sending out fake news alerts with links to malicious sites.
Virus attachments are also expected to remain a threat, albeit a relatively small one, as spammers “work hard to rebuild their networks to replace what was lost in the McColo shutdown,” according to the post.
Sources:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/01/2008-year-in-spam.html
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_setbacks_for_spammers_i.php
