’Tis the season… to protect your inbox

December 4th, 2006: It may not be snowing in Australia for Christmas, but the season is certainly bringing an avalanche of spam with it. And unfortunately, small businesses appear to be the main targets as spam and phishing gangs ramp up their activities.

‘Tis the season to be spamming declared MessageLabs as it announced the findings of its November 2006 intelligence report. The messaging and web security firm says that spam continues to be a major threat to all businesses with global spam levels in November reaching 74 percent of all emails, a jump of 1.1 percent on the previous month and the highest level observed since early 2005.

Because it uses additional perimeter defences such as traffic management, the company claims that its assessment is on the lower end of the actual global volume of spam, which it estimates at 89.4 percent of all messages.

MessageLabs also says that increasing amounts of attention is being bestowed on small businesses, whose employees are receiving close to double the amount of their medium-sized business counterparts, and 60 percent more per month than those working in enterprises.

This increased emphasis on small businesses is due to their limited IT resources and low-end security measures. Not to mention the sheer number of small business out there. The holiday season is shaping up to be a bumper one for cyber criminals too due to increases in consumer sales both online and off.

a 2.2 billion jump in the spam emails between June and October

“The cyber criminals are out in full force and utilising the holiday season to their advantage. Whether it’s targeting smaller businesses that don’t have the IT expertise or resource to fully protect themselves from new threats, or consumers dropping their guard in exchange for retail therapy, the bad guys have an overabundance of opportunities to target,” said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer, MessageLabs. “With the Warezov Trojan dropper, responsible for October’s steep rise in spam, causing more trouble in November and the phishers back on the radar, companies and consumers alike need to stay extra vigilant at such active times in order to stay healthy during the holiday season.”

The report also found that:

• In November, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and unknown bad sources was 74.0 percent (1 in 1.35 emails), an increase of 1.1 percent on the previous month. With spam levels rising almost 10 percent in the past two months, spam levels are expected to continue to rise till the end of 2006.
• The global ratio of viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources destined for valid recipients was 1 in 137.5 emails (0.7 percent) in November, a decrease of 0.27 percent since last month. Despite these lower numbers, November witnessed further attacks from the Warezov Trojan which is persistently being mass-mailed in numerous batches, each modified to avoid signature based detection.
• November showed a slight decrease of 0.03 percent in the proportion of phishing attacks compared with the previous month. One in 200 (0.5 percent) emails comprised some form of phishing attack. When judged as a proportion of all email-borne threats, the number of phishing emails significantly increased after a fairly stable period last month 68.8 percent of all malicious emails intercepted by MessageLabs in November were phishing attacks, an increase of 11.7% on the previous month.
• Education and Manufacturing remain at the top of the vertical listings for spam attacks with 73.5 percent and 71.6 percent respectively, with the Education sector also retaining its position at the top of the virus listings with levels at 1.5 percent (1 in 67.6 emails).
• The largest increase in spam levels was in the Accommodation and Catering sector, which rose by 3.9 percent this month whilst the Non-Profit/Charity sector spam levels fell the most significantly, by 5.0 percent.
• Virus traffic destined for Business Support Services fell by 5.6 percent to 1.4 percent (1 in 70.3) of emails, the most significant decrease of all sectors but it still retains its position as the second most attacked sector.
• There were minimal increases in virus traffic across most vertical sectors this month, with only Estate Agents and Agriculture sectors receiving increased attention with rises of 0.32 percent and 0.37 percent respectively.

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