Security news and products; 2006: the year spam raised its game and threats got personal.

MessageLabs have announced the results of its 2006 Annual MessageLabs Intelligence Report which examines trends seen over the last twelve months and looks forward to 2007. The report highlights the relentless escalation of spam activity throughout the year, with annual average spam levels reaching 86.2 percent, driven by an increase in sophistication of botnets and new targeted techniques. The adoption of new levels of ingenuity has changed the focus of the threat landscape significantly, with spam overtaking viruses as the dominant menace over the last twelve months, a trend which is predicted to continue through 2007.

Corporate and industrial espionage attacks are also on the rise through targeted trojans intended to steal intellectual property and confidential information. MessageLabs now intercepts two attacks per day, compared to a much lower rate of one per week at the same point in 2005. The targeted approach is prevalent in phishing attacks too, an increasingly dominant force in all malicious emails intercepted by MessageLabs, with levels rising from 10.6 percent in January to 68.8 percent in December.

A key component in the success of these highly targeted attacks is the distribution of spyware and adware which has grown into a multibillion dollar industry and fuelled an increase in the number of botnets being created. Botnets have the ability to retrieve information such as cracked usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and other personal data stored in the web-browser's auto-fill database. MessageLabs analysts saw an increased number of bad guys renting one to two thousand bots for just $50-$60 a week, with the option of trading payment for stolen credit card numbers. A trend we are likely to see continue in 2007. "2006 was the year that spammers took the security industry by storm and showcased their new tactics and techniques for mass disruption. Now accounting for almost nine out of ten emails, spam has categorically shed its title of being a nuisance and is a perilous threat which all companies need to be protected against," said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer. "The next year will certainly bring more targeted and sophisticated attacks as the bad guys continue to sharpen their tools. Companies need to take a layered and proactive security approach by fighting against cyber-criminals from 'in the cloud' at the internet level."

MessageLabs security experts predict that 2007 will be the year of true convergence, between spam, viruses and spyware and also across business communication protocols, a trend that started to appear in 2006. Instant Messaging (IM) threats will become more aggressive as more IM ecosystems open their networking to each other in 2007, like Yahoo! and MSN did in 2006. Attacks against social networking sites such as MySpace and professional sites like LinkedIn and Plaxo are expected to continue due to useful and accessible contact information and user interests, making it easier to launch targeted attacks.

www.messagelabs.com