Spam messages flooding South African networks reached record highs in May, before falling back by more than 13% in June to account for just more than 91% of all e-mail traffic.
That's according to the inaugural quarterly SYNAQ Spam Index, which 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 index, which covers the second quarter of 2009 (April - June), reveals a sharp 12% rise to a record 95 million spam messages in May, up from 84.2 million the previous month. But in June, the number of spam e-mails dropped back to just over 71 million.
Sam Gelbart, director: Software Services at SYNAQ, attributes the decline to the US Federal Trade Commission's shut-down of the rogue Pricewert ISP early in the month. This 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 shutdown.
However, Gelbart believes the respite from the shutdown will be short-lived, with spam volumes likely to rise again.
“There's an ongoing war of attrition with spam purveyors. As one botnet gets shut down, another starts up,” Gelbart explains.
Meanwhile, despite the decline in spam volumes in June, the number of malicious virus carrying e-mails continued to increase steadily throughout the quarter.
“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,” he concludes.
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