Relief provided by the shutdown of major spam purveyors in June this year was short-lived: the latest quarterly SYNAQ Spam Index reveals that within two months, spammers had returned with a vengeance and the incidence of spam flooding corporate networks in South Africa soared to record highs.
The SYNAQ Spam Index tracks spam, virus and clean e-mail traffic volumes in South Africa as monitored by the managed Linux services and open source solutions company.
The 2009 third quarter index (July - September) reveals a 7.2% rise in spam volumes in July, accounting for 91.66% of all e-mail messages. But in August, spammers hit back and the rate of spam increased by a frightening 48.96% to account for a record 94.76% of all e-mail messages.
This surge more than wiped out the gains made in June and July following the US Federal Trade Commission's shut-down of the rogue Pricewert ISP. This had dealt a major blow to the notorious Cutwail botnet, which was said to be responsible for over a third of global spam traffic in the month prior to the shut-down. Indeed, it resulted in spam volumes in South Africa declining by almost 14% in the immediate aftermath of the closure.
By September, the volume of spam messages had settled back to pre-shutdown levels of around 93.4%, a 22.3% decline on the spam rate in August.
Another notable feature of the Index is the fact that in August the volume of all e-mail messages increased by 44%.
According to Sam Gelbart, director: Software Services at SYNAQ, this entire increase was undoubtedly due to the almost 50% rise in spam volumes that month. The following month, e-mail traffic dropped by 17%, while spam volumes declined by just over 22%.
Meanwhile, despite the lower spam volumes in June and July, the number of malicious virus-carrying e-mails rose sharply by over 50% in July before falling back some 26% in August. However, the number of e-mail-borne viruses picked up again slightly in September.
“Even though the volume of e-mail-borne viruses is statistically low in comparison to spam, there is always the threat of the next zero day outbreak. It's therefore essential to always remain vigilant,” Gelbart concludes.
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