Malware, spam, zombies

Highlights from Commtouch's recently published Q3 2009 Internet Threats Trend Report.

Commtouch published its overview of the latest quarter. The most important findings are listed below.

> Email-borne malware that bypassed traditional anti-virus engines peaked every 11 to 13 days during the second half of the quarter.
> An average of 332,000 zombies were newly activated each day for the purpose of malicious activity.
> Brazil continues to produce the most zombies, responsible for 19.7% of global zombie activity.
> Spam levels averaged 83% of all email traffic throughout the quarter, peaking at 97% in July and bottoming out at 71% in August.
> Sites in the "Health & Medicine" and "Sex Education" categories topped the list of web categories manipulated by phishing schemes.
> "Business" continued to be the web site category most infected with malware.
> The financial crises and the debate around health care reform in the US has shaped recent spam trends. Pharmacy spam returned to the top spot with 68% of all spam messages.

Source: Commtouch.