Email spam rate down to 49.7 per cent: Symantec
21 Jul 2015
Finally there is some good news for people concerned over cybersecurity.
According to online security firm Symantec, overall spam rate had dropped to less than 50 per cent of email (49.7 per cent), in the first instance of the kind, in over a decade. The last time Symantec recorded a similar figure was in September 2003.
Phishing rates and email-based malware too declined this month, however, there were 57.6 million new malware variants created in June, up from 44.5 million pieces of malware created in May and 29.2 million in April.
The increased activity lent more credence to the idea that, with the continued drops in email-based malicious activity, attackers were simply moving to other areas of the threat landscape.
Ransomware attacks increased in June, with over 477,000 detected during the month still below the levels seen at the end of 2014, this was the second month in a row of ransomware increasing since they reached a 12-month low in April.
Crypto-ransomware was also up in June, reaching the highest levels seen since December 2014.
Targeted attacks against the manufacturing industry leveled out in June, retreating from 41 per cent to 22 per cent.
Manufacturing still topped the charts in terms of sectors subject to targeted attacks, but activity was now in line with what was being seen in the finance, insurance and real estate sector and the services.
According to commentators, in addition to spam, there was a potentially more risky problem with email, the risk of malware infection.
It remained to be seen how the spam-malware ratio would behave over the coming months and years, but internet users would do well to keep their antivirus programs updated at all times.
In a development that comes as a surprise, the industry that sent the most spam emails in June was mining, with a spam rate of 56.1 per cent.
The only instance of an off-trend development was companies between 251 and 500 employees, seeing a spam rate of 53.2 per cent. While this was below what occurred at the end of 2014, it was the second month in a row that ransomware attacks had increased.
Also, unlike six or seven years ago, sending billions of messages per day from massive botnets is no longer feasible.
