Spam volumes reach record-breaking 90 per cent

According to the study conducted by enterprise message management and email security firm FrontBridge, the record-breaking levels of unsolicited email can in part be attributed to spam associated with back-to-school offers and a flood of politically motivated messages.

The spam analysis was compiled during August by a team that crunched 3.1 billion messages for more than 2,200 enterprise customers representing over 15,000 email domains. Over the course of the month, FrontBridge recorded 2.5 billion spam messages and 34 million virus-infected emails. Spam volume was found to hit the 90 per cent high on August 30.

FrontBridge noted that, since it first began filtering spam in 2000, the volume of unsolicited email has grown by an astounding 1600 per cent.

The research also found that, among the 34 million viruses caught during August, the most widespread infection was Zerolin-C. This virus exploits system or Windows software vulnerabilities by accessing a remote website by means of an HTTP IFRAME exploit. This virus also carries the aliases of TrojanDropper.VBS. Zerolin and HTML_ZEROLIN.B.