Member Article

Spam on the rise

The volume of spam being sent and the sophisticated ways to send it are increasing, according to two internet security firms. Experts at the two companies said that the amount of unwanted emails over the last three months has effectively trebled.

Greater use of e-mail combined with the prospect of financial gain for spammers is driving the unprecedented increase, to the extent that nine out of every ten e-mails are now unsolicited. IT workers and home users alike have been bombarded with e-mails pitching financial investments, diet pills, sex-related drugs - or viruses, aimed at turning PCs into spam-senders. Experts at e-mail security firm Barracuda found the volume of spam has leapt 67%, and recorded almost a 500% increase in image-based spam over the last three months. Similar findings came from lab experts at Postini, who recorded a 58% surge in overall levels during the same period.

Daniel Druker, an executive vice president at Postini, said: “This dramatic rise in spam attacks on corporate networks has the Internet under a state of siege. “Spam has evolved from a tool for nuisance hackers and annoying marketers to one for criminal enterprises. “Spammers are increasingly aggressive and sophisticated in their techniques, and protection from spam has become a front-burner issue again.”

New tactics from spam authors mean large enterprises must be able to detect outbreaks of spam early and deploy suitable strategies to thwart its spread. Tactics employed include misspelling key words or randomly inserting unrelated phrases to throw off spam filters.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .