Commerce, Featuring News, Press Releases, IT Directory & Links
Marshal Traces A Huge Surge In Sexual Enhancement Spam In 2007
Published 13th February 2008
Latest Security Report from the TRACE team tracks the major spam, malware and phishing trends and threat predictions for 2008..
LONDON, 11 February 2008 – Secure email and Internet gateway security provider Marshal has today released the latest TRACE report. It shows that a spam botnet promoting a particular brand of male enhancement pills accounted for one-third of the total spam volume at the end of 2007. This happened at a time when spam volume was increasing; overall spam volume grew by over 50% in the second half of last year.
The full report can be downloaded from the TRACE website
(http://www.marshal.com/newsimages/trace/Marshal_Trace_Report-Dec_2007.pdf).
TRACE data and trend analysis are continually updated and accessible online at http://www.marshal.com/trace/.
The health spam category, promoting pharmaceuticals such as weight loss pills and performance enhancing drugs, was the dominant spam category in 2007 comprising nearly 70 percent of all spam in the year. The latest report, compiled by Marshal’s Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) team, reviews the major developments in spam, malware and phishing in 2007 and reveals the TRACE team’s predictions for threat developments in 2008.
“Despite the increased efforts of law enforcement agencies to crack down on spammers and their botnets, spam grew even worse in 2007. Sex sells and the financial motives of the cybercriminal underworld that sustains spam appear to remain strong. The cost of acquiring the tools and services needed to send spam is reducing and whenever a spam gang is caught, there are others ready to jump in and take over. For these reasons, we are not optimistic that spam is going to recede in 2008,” commented Bradley Anstis, Vice President of Products for Marshal.
Marshal’s TRACE team monitors and responds to a wide range of Internet security threats and is responsible for the anti-malware defence and up-dates for Marshal’s suite of content security solutions.