Spam up by 50% in first quarter of 2008

Via securecomputing.net.au -

Worldwide spam volumes have surged by 50 percent in the first quarter of 2008 revealed security vendor Proofpoint today, who now predicts enterprises will see inbound spam more than double this year.

Short term spikes of 60 percent or more have also been seen and some enterprises have witnessed spam volume increases as high as 200% in Q1 2008, claimed Proofpoint.

The rise continues the trend of the last two years.

"Botnets continue to proliferate and are by far the dominant source of spam," said Gerry Tucker, regional head for Proofpoint in APAC.

"The Storm botnet, already the largest network of compromised machines in history, doubled in size during the holiday season alone,” said Tucker.

The massive computing power and network resources associated with these botnets allow spammers and scammers to constantly increase the aggressiveness and scale of their attacks, he added.

Furthermore, the large numbers of new Internet users coming online across the world are fueling the growth of botnets.

“The high volumes of email associated with today's spam attacks can escalate the number of inbound messages between 500 percent and 700 percent within a period of hours. This sudden, exponential growth in spam volumes can easily strain IT network infrastructure to the point of failure,” said Tucker.