If there was any question about whether email-borne malware is still an effective tactic for cybercriminals, the past weeks have made it clear someone believes it is. 10′s of billions of malware-laden email messages have been detected by Commtouch in the last six weeks, with the daily average having increased by nearly 400%. On a single day in early August, Commtouch Labs identified over 25 billion emails containing malware! Several more major peaks have occurred since then and the trend is continuing.
There have been no significant changes in spam volumes since the attacks began, which would have been the most typical result of such malware waves, and there haven’t been any other reported attacks, so the reason for the extended malware outbreak and its ultimate goal still remain to be seen. This blog post describes the recent wave of malware emails, along with some data from Commtouch Labs.
The good news for Sentrion customers is that this problem is taken care of without end-users even knowing!