Spam 

Spammers and Hackers have been busier than ever this summer. June set the record for all time high in spam messages, and spam rates continue to hover at around 90% of all messages sent. The Spackers (Spammer/Hacker) continue to hone their techniques in this constant game of cat and mouse. The latest trend is a shift to attachment spam, where the payload is delivered via an attached file. Attachment spam now represents a very significant portion of all spam sent. The bad guys have turned to PDF, Excell and Zip File Atachments to deliver spam. This means that spam will continue to eat up bandwidth and will likely lead to an increase in false positives, as anti-spam vendors adjust filters to account for the shift in spamming techniques. The good news? Image spam is on the decline.

Viruses

July has seen the largest sustained virus attack in over two years, with a flood of storm worm like malware delivered by Botnet Machines via fake greeting cards and spam messages with links to malware carrying web site.  

Botnets

And, speaking of Botnets, despite a crackdown effort by the FBI early in the summer, it looks like the overall number of Botnet Zombie computers continues to grow. 

The Prognosis

If you’ve seen more spam getting through your filters this summer, it’s probably not because the developers and technicians that build and maintain your anti-spam / anti-virus decided to hang out at the pool until Fall. It’s likely because the overall volume of spam and viruses continues to push boundaries never before seen. Couple this with the myriad of new techniques and tactics and, well, the security community has to scramble to keep up.

As for MxToolBox, we’ve worked hard to make sure our FlexBox Email Security Service has provided the highest possible level of protection for our customers mailbox’s though this summer spam season.