14 DAY TRIAL // Security company Message labs has announced the results of its intelligence report for the 3rd quarter of 2007. Amongst other details, it reveals that virus and phishing levels have significantly increased, reaching levels that haven't been seen since early 2006. This is pretty bad, because it means that these methods still work. So yes, the people that are targeted are actually being taken advantage of. It seems that malicious users still have the upper hand as long as people are being sloppy about their own security.
As for viruses, they report that two percent of e-mails have a virus threat incorporated - 1 in every 48 messages being affected by this. But don't take this lightly - it doesn't mean that hackers are slacking, it means that commercially intended spam has reached great numbers, making e-mail borne threats seem like a minor thing, though they aren't.
"The start of the new school year seemed to bring back an increase in old-school threats and in high volumes. With email more ubiquitous than the telephone and one in 48 emails containing a virus, most people are unwittingly receiving more than one virus a day," said Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst, MessageLabs. "As we enter the last quarter of 2007 and draw closer to the holiday season, the bad guys will be provided opportunity to disguise their attacks through the increase in genuine well-wishing emails and the anticipated upsurge in online shopping traffic. In addition, with the incessant rise of comprised machines through aggressive botnet activity, further spam level increases are anticipated."
And some more interesting facts: the country with the most spam was Israel, with 73.8 percent, while the one with the lowest spam ratio was Japan (27.1 percent). However, what seems to me a bit awkward is the fact that the financial sector is the least spammed, while the agricultural sector is the one with the most unwanted messages. See the full report here.