The trend of deceiving users into accessing specially programmed websites to spread malware is becoming increasingly prevalent within the cybercrime community.
This indicates that the authors of malware are turning away from the long-standing method of distribution — spreading through email attachments.
Email security firm BlackSpider Technologies has reported a significant decline in the number of emails containing viruses from the beginning of the year until the end of June. June also set a new record, with only 0.68% of emails sent that month containing viruses, down 0.05% compared to May’s figure of 0.73%.
The total amount of spam emails also saw a considerable decrease. Spam accounted for only 78.1% of all emails sent in June, while the figure for May was 87.7%.
BlackSpider warns that the shift in virus distribution mainly through the web will necessitate changes in security policies.
Businesses need to upgrade their email filtering tools against viruses and trojans to include web filtering techniques to combat this emerging trend.
Statistics from a similar timeframe by the security and anti-spam company SoftScan also revealed a trend consistent with BlackSpider’s findings. SoftScan indicated that the proportion of emails containing viruses dropped to just 0.36% of the total emails sent in June, despite a strong outbreak of a new Bagle virus variant during the month.
SoftScan attributes this decline to the onset of the summer vacation period in many businesses, along with the recent arrest of members of the M00P cybercrime group.
SoftScan reported that the top five email threats in June included online phishing attacks (48.05%), Netsky virus (16.69%), Mytob (15.05%), Bagle (5.94%), and Mydoom (3.44%).
Hoàng Dũng
