Commtouch's second quarter 2008 E-mail Threats Report shows current trends in e-mail threats, including the role of zombie computers.
According to the report, spam levels averaged 77%, showing peaks of up to 94% some days, with 40% of all spam concerning pharmaceutical products. Spammers also experimented with vertical display of Chinese-language spam.
The report also showed that there are 10 million zombie IP addresses active daily, with Turkey accounting for 11% of the total worldwide zombie PCs. The domains with the largest volume of infected machines are Telecom Italia, Brasil Telecom, and Verizon.
"Zombie networks or 'botnets' have become so enormous and agile, they are flooding e-mail with increasingly malicious threats," explains Amir Lev, Commtouch's CTO and president. "Many technologies attempt to identify and block e-mail from senders known for sending malicious content, but they are not updated rapidly enough to keep up.
"By the time these lists are updated the threat has shifted to another set of zombies, leaving customers unprotected. On the one hand, ISPs have an obligation to protect their customers from unwanted e-mail; however, they also have a responsibility to ensure that their customers are not a source of unwanted e-mail by being part of these botnets."
The report is available here.
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