ISPReview
This month may not be over quite yet, but that hasn't stopped SoftScan from releasing its latest virus and spam (junk mail) statistics for June 2006. The percentage of email classified as virus infected remains low at 0.36%, while spam was marginally higher at 85.11%:
On the 21st June SoftScan reported that a Bagle variant was spammed out over an eighteen hour period, particularly targeting some European countries. In this latest development, Bagle was sent as a password protected zip file, with the password sent as an image displayed in the body of the email. This makes it more difficult for some anti-virus vendors to detect the virus, but as SoftScan predicted, having to enter the password no doubt made many users think twice about opening the attachment anyway, thus preventing an epidemic.
However, it wasn?t all bad news in June on the virus front. Three arrests in the UK and Finland of members believed to be a part of the M00P gang is a significant breakthrough in the fight against malware.
?The international police co-operation that has led to these recent arrests is welcomed news to everyone fighting against viruses,? comments Bo Engelbrechtsen, corporate communications manager of SoftScan. ?It sends a clear message that the Internet does not necessarily offer the complete anonymity that clearly some criminals think it does. Although it remains to be seen whether these arrests prevent the rest of the group from carrying on effectively, it definitely demonstrates that chinks in their armour can be found.?
Top five Virus families for June are:
1. phishing: 48.05%
2. netsky: 16.69%
3. mytob: 15.05%
4. bagle: 5.94%
5. mydoom: 3.44%
The low level of virus e-mails is also a testament to the relative ease with which systems can now target and filter out such messages, unlike SPAM, which is a complete nightmare to correctly remove.
Topic: Virus & SPAM Statistics - June 2006 (Read 791 times)