Commtouch released yesterday its annual report on email threats and trends the company collected in 2007.

Not that we needed reminding, but spam now represents over 80% of all global email traffic, reaching a peak of over 95% in Q4 of last year.

Some of the highlights from the report:

• Botnets are becoming increasingly sophisticated, allowing their Botmasters to orchestrate massive spam campaigns, host malicious web sites and perform DDoS attacks.
• MP3 spam is on the rise. That is somewhat surprising to me. Apparently, 7-10% of all global spam is now distributed in the form of .mp3 attachments.
• Event and holiday related email threats are adding an extra punch. The cyber crooks are very creative in exploiting human curiosity, fan following and goodwill for their purposes. We have seen various holiday related scams and even fake fan contests such as the one surfacing around the launch of the Simpsons Movie.

Unfortunately, I don’t think we will see any relief in 2008. For corporate messaging systems, massive spam and DDoS attacks are a daily reality. Email has become the primary communication medium and lifeblood for most companies, so it is vital to stay proactive on the defense front as assault tactics change ever more rapidly.

Technorati Tags: botnets, commtouch, email threats, spam

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