ATLANTA -- Secure email and Internet gateway security provider Marshal has today released the latest TRACE report. It shows that a spam botnet promoting a particular brand of male enhancement pills accounted for one-third of the total spam volume at the end of 2007. This happened at a time when spam volume was increasing; overall spam volume grew by more than 50% in the second half of last year.

The full report can be downloaded from the TRACE website.

The health spam category, promoting pharmaceuticals such as weight loss pills and performance enhancing drugs, was the dominant spam category in 2007, comprising nearly 70 percent of all spam during the year. The latest report, compiled by Marshal’s Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) team, reviews the major developments in spam, malware and phishing in 2007 and reveals the TRACE team’s predictions for threat developments in 2008.

“Despite the increased efforts of law enforcement agencies to crack down on spammers and their botnets, spam grew even worse in 2007,” commented Bradley Anstis, Vice President of Products for Marshal. “Sex sells and the financial motives of the cybercriminal underworld that sustains spam appear to remain strong. The cost of acquiring the tools and services needed to send spam is reducing and whenever a spam gang is caught, there are others ready to jump in and take over. For these reasons, we are not optimistic that spam is going to recede in 2008.”

Marshal Inc.