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Commtouch Q3 Internet Threats Trend Report Highlights Increase In Android Malware

Report also found 87 billion daily spam/phishing emails sent
MCLEAN, Virginia, October 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Commtouch(R) (NASDAQ: CTCH), a leading provider of cloud-based solutions for security companies and service providers, today released its October 2012 Commtouch Internet Trends Report

[http://www.commtouch.com/threat-report-oct-2012 ].

Android Malware on the Rise

Android malware continues to grow - both in volume and in the number of variants of Trojans and viruses. Proof of Android's increasing popularity was a July attack that only targeted the Google OS. The attack made use of compromised email accounts to send simple one-link emails. In the past this method has been used to distribute links to spam products or links to drive-by malware downloads. In this case the malware URLs only worked for Android devices.

The report also notes that the Grum spam botnet was taken down in July, but that only a very short-lived reduction in spam and zombie levels was observed.

Led by Avi Turiel, director of threat research and market analysis, Commtouch's Internet Threat Analysis Team regularly publishes related statistics within its report. The quarterly report is compiled based on a comprehensive analysis of billions of daily transactions handled by Commtouch's GlobalView(TM) Cloud [http://www.commtouch.com/cloud ]. The results for the third quarter of 2012

include:

- 87 billion - The average number of daily spam/phishing emails sent

- 74% - Percent of all email that was spam

- 1.9 billion - The average number of daily emails sent with attached malware

- Education - The Web site category most likely to contain malware

- Pharmacy ads - The most popular spam topic, representing 41.2 percent of all

spam

- India - The country with the most zombies

Olympics Used in Advance Fee Fraud

Editors' Choice
Evan Schuman, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
Tara Seals, Managing Editor, News, Dark Reading
Jeffrey Schwartz, Contributing Writer, Dark Reading