Commtouch Releases Its Q2 2010 Internet Threats Report
Quarterly overview highlights the key security threats detected and analyzed by the security innovator in the previous months.
Web and messaging security innovator Commtouch has released its Internet Threats Trend Report for Q2 2010.
According to Commtouch vice president of products Asaf Greiner, cybercriminals have “been forced to change their techniques to evade improved detection technology.”
Greiner reports that complex, multi-stage attacks “with improved social engineering” have been proving to be the “preferred technique” of cyber criminals.
The multi-stage (or “blended”) attacks to which Greiner refers tend to combine messaging and Web elements. According to Commtouch, these attacks “use email or search engine results to lure victims to sites hosting spam advertising, malware, or phishing.”
Commtouch’s Q2 report analyzes the many methods fraudsters, malware distributors, and spammers use to inspire their victims to action. These methods include leveraging trusted brands (like Apple and Google), holidays (like Mother’s Day), or current events (such as the Football World Cup).
During Q2, Gmail and Yahoo kept the top spots for spoofed domains in email distribution, according to the Internet Threats Trend Report. They have been joined in the top six, however, by Twitter.
“The Twitter domain was faked in a widespread mailing designed to lure users to a ‘password reset’ Web page that contained malware,” Commtouch reports.
Commtouch’s quarterly trend report is based on the analysis of more than two billion email messages daily. It also employs data derived from the company’s GlobalView URL database, which is a part of the company’s cloud-based GlobalView Network.
Some highlights from the Q2 Trend Report include:
- Spam levels averaged 82% of all email traffic throughout the quarter, bottoming out at 71% at the start of May and peaking at nearly 92% near the end of June.
- Pharmacy spam retained the top spot with 64 percent of all spam.
- An average of 307,000 zombies were activated daily to inflict malicious activity, representing a slight increase over the prior quarter.
- India has surpassed Brazil for the title of the country with the most zombies (13 percent of the world’s total).
- TDSS.17 was the most widely distributed email-borne virus, but the Mal/Bredo malware had the most variants (over 1800, which is more than double that of Q1).
- Pornography remains the Web site category most infected with malware.
- In the Web 2.0 sphere of user-generated content, streaming media/downloads is the most popular topic for blog creators.
The full report is available for download from the Commtouch Web site.
