[ISN] 90 percent of e-mail is spam, Symantec says

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9133526

By Robert McMillan
IDG News Service
May 26, 2009 

Spammers seem to be working a little bit harder these days, according to 
Symantec, which reported Tuesday that unsolicited e-mail made up 90.4 
percent of messages on corporate networks last month.

That represents a 5.1 percent increase over last month's numbers, but 
it's nothing out of the ordinary. For years, spam has made up somewhere 
between 80 percent and 95 percent of all e-mail on the Internet.

Symantec reported that nearly 58 percent of spam is now coming from 
so-called botnets --networks of hacked computers that can be misused by 
criminals to steal financial information, launch attacks or send spam. 
The worst of the spamming botnets -- called Donbot -- generates 18.2 
percent of all spam, according to Symantec.

These botnet computers can be rented out on the black market by anybody, 
but in recent months some spammers have been moving away from botnets, 
experimenting with a new way to sneak their unwanted e-mail past 
corporate filters, according to Adam O'Donnell, a researcher with 
antispam vendor Cloudmark.

[...]


5B
--