Malware down but SPAM on the up

Symantec MessageLabs Intelligence’s latest report looks bright at first glance as it appears malware writers are laying low on the internet.

Spammers, on the other hand, have increased their efforts by venturing into multi-lingual messages that seem to work out disastrously, or well, depending on whose side you are on.

Symantec reported that spam levels are higher than they have been in the last two years with over 90% of all emails reportedly stemming from spam.

The numbers are worse in Germany, France, and the Netherlands where spam has reached the 95% mark.

MessageLab Intelligence suspects this is due to the fact that automated multi-lingual services allow for spam to duplicate quickly across countries, with reports that language spam now makes up 53% of the spam in France and 46% in Germany.

Senior analyst Paul Wood, of MessageLabs Intelligence, said that tools such as translation services and templates make it easy for spammers to attack email recipients in multiple countries at once.

Wood went on to state that non-English spam accounts for 5% of all spam messages.

As mentioned earlier, the silver lining is that malware analysis of the month of July reports that only .7% of all malware that was intercepted was new, which is down quite a bit from the reported 58.8% new malware attacks in June.

However, there are still many new websites that now contain the old malware programs that now total up to 3,618, which may lead to the conclusion that malware developers are taking a break simply because the old attack methods are still working as planned.