According to a report by Commtouch, new camouflage tactics being used by spammers to cloak their bad reputations are enabling malware and unwanted messages to infiltrate inboxes.
Local Commtouch business partner Camsoft says that Commtouch's third quarter 2008 E-mail Threats Trend Report was also released today. The report is based on the automated analysis of billions of e-mail messages weekly.
Highlights of the report include:
* 1. Spam levels throughout the third quarter averaged 77%, as in the previous quarter, ranging from a low of 61% to a peak of 94% of all e-mail.
* 2. Legitimate sites and senders were used by spammers to cloak their illicit activity, including sites like Microsoft's Live.com.
* 3. Over half of zombies/bots change their IP address daily.
* 4. Germany has the fastest rate of zombie IP address turnover, at approximately 79% per day;
* China is a close second at 78% turnover per day.
* 5. Malware masqueraded as legitimate newsletters such as CNN Daily Top 10 or IE7 Browser updates.
* 6. New spam tactics during the quarter included: links to Flash (.swf) files, ASCII art spam, and hidden Bayesian poisoning text combined with HTML tricks.
“Internet service providers and enterprises are implementing a broad range of filtering tactics, including filtering based on sender reputation, which in turn impact how spammers and malware distributors can reach their goal of penetrating inboxes,” said Amir Lev, chief technology officer of Commtouch. “The growing trend is for spammers to adopt the good reputation built up by other sites and senders in order to bypass reputation-based e-mail filters. They accomplish this in a number of ways, including stealing legitimate e-mail senders' credentials or compromising e-mail account enrolment processes and automatically registering thousands of free e-mail accounts. This puts ISPs in the uncomfortable position of becoming the source of outbound spam rather than just trying to protect their subscribers from receiving spam.”
Commtouch Recurrent Pattern Detection and GlobalView technologies identify and block e-mail threats, including increasingly malicious malware and phishing outbreaks. Commtouch messaging security technologies were recently awarded the 2008 European Messaging Security Technology Innovation of the Year Award by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan.
More details, including samples of spam and malware messages, are available in the Commtouch Q3 2008 E-mail Threats Trend Report, available from Commtouch Labs at: http://www.commtouch.com/documents/Commtouch_Q308_Email_Trends.pdf.
NOTE: Reported global spam levels are based on Internet e-mail traffic as measured from unfiltered data streams, not including internal corporate traffic. Therefore global spam levels will differ from the quantities reaching end-user inboxes, due to several possible layers of filtering at the ISP level.
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Commtouch
Commtouch (Nasdaq:CTCH) is the source of proven messaging and Web security technology for scores of security companies and service providers, founded on a unique data centre-based approach. Commtouch's expertise in building efficient, massive-scale security services has resulted in its patented technology being used to mitigate Internet threats for thousands of organisations and hundreds of millions of users in over 100 countries. Commtouch's data centres automatically analyse billions of transactions in real-time to identify new spam, malware and zombie outbreaks as they are initiated. Commtouch's unmatched suite of security offerings - anti-spam, virus detection, reputation and zombie intelligence services - work together in a comprehensive feedback loop. Commtouch was founded in 1991, is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, California.
For more information and real-time statistics and trends, see: http://www.commtouch.com and the Commtouch Caf'e blog at http://blog.commtouch.com/cafe.
Camsoft Solutions
Camsoft Solutions comprises two divisions: CRM and Data Security.
Camsoft's Data Security division provides security solutions and services to IT business partners serving a wide range of customers throughout Africa and our expertise and capabilities include solutions for anti-virus, anti-spam, spyware, authentication, secure access and firewalls. Our technology partners include Commtouch (www.commtouchantispam.co.za) for Advanced Spam Defense, F-Secure and BitDefender for anti-virus and personal firewalls and spyware, Microsoft for Forefront (formerly Sybari Antigen) anti-virus and Advanced Spam Manager (ASM) for MS Exchange and SMTP servers. Our network auditing solution, NetWhyz, is one of the most powerful reporting tools available for any size of network providing administrators with every piece of information they wish to know about their machines, how they are performing and their configuration.
Camsoft has actively been involved in providing CRM solutions in southern Africa since 1995 and received Maximizer's Africa Business Partner of the year award for 2007. Camsoft is capable of providing a full turnkey CRM solution, including sales, training, support, development and service level agreements, where required. With full service offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town and a technical office in Durban, Camsoft provides a wide range of technical services to a wide range of customers, including ISPs, banks, insurers, manufacturers, retailers, recruitment agencies and call centres, among others.
For more information please visit www.camsoft.co.za or mail support@camsoft.co.za.
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