Millions of virus transmissions and a mere 12 percent of all processed e-mails proving legitimate messages were what e-mail security company Postini said it handled in November – with 88 percent of the messages processed involving spam, phishing, viruses, and directory harvest attacks.
The company said they also detected over 26 million transmissions of the Netsky virus family, with Bagle variants coming in at 20.7 million (over double its October accounting), Sober at 15.8 million, and Mime at almost 12 million, with MyDoom a distant sixth at 5.9 million.
"As evidenced by the increase of email attacks at the connection level this month, spammers are getting smarter about how they approach their targets," said Postini product marketing director Andrew Lochart in a December 1 announcement that also promoted the company's e-mail boundary protection products. Boundary protection, Lochart said, "goes well beyond simple content filtering to provide security at the connection level to reduce email intrusion threats early on. Simple content filtering alone is ineffective as a means of stopping spam and viruses."
Postini said it fended off more than 19 million directory harvest attacks—spammers' attempts to hijack and steal entire e-mail directories from small enterprises and use them to send out spam that attacks corporate servers.
