97% of email is spam- report
- Added:
- Apr 09, 2009
More than 97% of all e-mails sent on the web are unwanted, according to new research.
The security report, from Microsoft, found that inboxes are dominated by spam adverts for drugs, and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments.
The report found that 8.6 out of 1,000 computers are infected with some form of malware virus globally. The UK's infection rate is 5.7, below the global average.
Office document attachments and PDF files were increasingly being targeted by hackers, the report found.
Ed Gibson, chief cyber security advisor at Microsoft, said the rise in spam was due to traditional organised crime figures moving away from exploiting software vulnerabilities and "targeting the weak link that is you and me".
"With higher capacity broadband and better OS (operating systems), and higher power computers it is easier now to send out billions of spams. Three or four years ago the capacity wasn't there."
The report, which looked at online activity during the second half of 2008, also locates the countries that are suffering from the most infections of malicious software, or malware.
Russia and Brazil top the global chart of infections, followed by Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro.
It said that the type of malware varied from country to country.
"As the malware ecosystem becomes more reliant on social engineering, threats worldwide have become more dependent on language and cultural factors," it reported.
In China, several malicious web browser modifiers are common, while in Brazil, malware that targets users of online banks is more widespread.
In Korea, viruses such as Win32/Virut and Win32/Parite are common.
The report highlighted the need to keep operating systems, web browsers and applications up to date with the latest versions.
More than 91% of attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office were using security holes that had been plugged by updates that had been available for more than two years.
Attacks using PDF files rose sharply in the second half of 2008, the report noted.
Read the full report with charts here: http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/sir.aspx
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