Spam Increased 141%

Spam levels have increased in the last few months, since March more precisely, in a 141% said McAfee Threat Report from Second Quarter in 2009. The main reason resides in another increase: botnets (infected computers used for spamming and other attacks) up to 16%. Need an explicit number? That translates in 117 billion spam emails every day.

The number that is quite disturbing as well, is the botnets that are currently infected: 14 million computers. 150k every day, that represent 20% of all the computers that are acquired every day. And these botnets and zombies they are not only responsible for most of the spam, also they generated other attacks like denial-of-service to the White House, New York Stock Exchange and South Korean government web sites.

About South Korea, that’s the country that increased the most in the botnet activity, up to 45%; but yes, the US keeps in the top of that list with over 15% of the entire zombie population.

These spam numbers do not come alone, malware attacks have increased, specially the ones that infect the Windows auto-run that do not require any user intervention to “spread the evil”. That type of malware even outnumbered the Koobface or the Conflicker attacks.

This is a battle that will never end I think, I’m sure that those that depend on this kind of battles will not let it end.

What do you think?

Tags: Botnets Conflicker Denial-of-service Koobface Malware McAfee McAfee Threat Report spam Spam Increasing Zombies