London, UK – March 1, 2007 – MessageLabs, a leading provider of integrated messaging and web security services to businesses worldwide, today announced the findings of its MessageLabs Intelligence Report for February 2007. In this report, MessageLabs highlights the increase in spam, virus and botnet activity, as well as an influx of new policies designed to combat ongoing threats.

For the fifth consecutive month, spam levels continued to rise with February levels reaching 77.8 percent of all emails. The increase has been linked to the predictable focus on Valentine’s Day related messages. February also saw a hike in seasonal hijacking threats, including the “For My Valentine” malware with attachments such as “Greetings Card.exe”. Additionally, MessageLabs saw a rise in newly created malware with 43.9 percent of all malware intercepted in February being of a new variety, indicating new efforts from malware authors and perhaps new malware distributors entering the market.

With the threat landscape continuing to increase in sophistication and aggressiveness, the introduction of new legislation in several geographies is a welcome arrival. Although Asia Pacific was previously seen as a significant source of spam, the introduction of ‘The Spam Control Bill’ in Singapore may help to decrease overall spam levels. The Bill poses tough penalties to those who spam via email and mobile phones, with fines of up to US $650,000.

This policy complements the new US legislation, ‘Undertaking Spam, Spyware, and Fraud Enforcement with Enforcers beyond Borders Act’ (SafeWeb), which will see increased cooperation between international law enforcement agencies, including the London Action Plan, an International spam enforcement network. This new act enables agencies to share information in the fight against international spam and online threats. Consequently, February also saw the first criminal conviction for virus writing in China, where eight men were arrested for creating the W32/Fujacks virus, designed to obtain online gaming information.

“While it is routine to see the bad guys use seasonal tactics to exploit unsuspecting targets, the recent rise in Valentine’s Day specific malware proves it is still effective,” said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst, MessageLabs. “Although it is commendable that global law enforcement agencies are attempting to address the spam and botnet issue, we are likely to see the spammers continuing to innovate both in terms of targeting and with new techniques to reach the end user.”

Following heightened ‘Storm Worm’ activity in January, there has been increased speculation that a new botnet of compromised computers has been created. It also appears that this botnet and others have been used to take a break from spamming and instead launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to bombard a number of anti-spam sites. Notably, Spamhaus was targeted by the Warezov group who redirected DDoS traffic to its portal.

Other report highlights:

Spam: In February, the global ratio of spam in email traffic was 77.8 percent (1 in 1.29 emails), which is an increase of two percent on the previous month.

Viruses: The global ratio of viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources destined for valid recipients was 1 in 112.9 emails (0.89 percent) in February, an increase of 0.05 percent since last month. Interestingly, MessageLabs analysis has flagged as new 43.9 percent of all malware intercepted in February.

Phishing: February showed a decrease of 0.58 percent in the proportion of phishing attacks compared with the previous month. One in 203.7 (0.49 percent) emails comprised of some form of phishing attack. MessageLabs estimates 55.4 percent of all malicious emails intercepted in February were phishing attacks, a decrease of 0.8 percent on the previous month.

Geographic Trends:

• For virus levels, Ireland no longer remains in the top five, and instead Germany takes the lead with a 2.07 percent increase in virus attacks (1 in 25.5 emails) which may have been brought about with localised activity. Virus levels in India also saw an increase with 1.1 percent and France with 1.86 percent.
• Israel has lost its position as the most spammed country with a 14.3 percent drop to 56.1 percent.
• In Italy, spam levels rose by 8.3 percent moving up four places, with Japan dropping by 18.9 percent taking it to the bottom of the league and replacing India.
  
  

Vertical/Industry Trends:

• Education is the most targeted sector for viruses, which rose by 0.79 percent despite a 0.4 percent drop since January. This may be due to the low-cost or free tools deployed by the sector, for example the use of open source and free anti-virus software.
• Marketing/Media also makes a mark in the top five spam rankings table with 59.5 percent, with an increase of 1.1 percent.
• Manufacturing continues to remain at the top, with 68.1 percent of all emails being spam, and saw an increase of 0.1 percent.
• The greatest decrease occurred within the Accommodation/Catering sector where levels fell from 64 percent in January to 48 percent in February.
• The Telecoms sector continues to intercept the least number of virus attacks, with only 1 in 410 emails.
  
  

The February 2007 MessageLabs Intelligence Report provides greater detail on all of the trends and figures noted above, as well as more detailed geographical and vertical trends. The full report is available at

MessageLabs Intelligence is a respected source of data and analysis for messaging security issues, trends and statistics. MessageLabs provides a range of information on global security threats based on live data feeds from our control towers around the world.