November Tops for Spam, Zombies on the Rise

According to a report, 170,000 new machines are added to the ranks of zombie spammers each day.

By  Michael Hall | Dec 5, 2005
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A messaging security company says November has been the worst month of the year for spam thanks mainly to a widespread virus outbreak.

According to CipherTrust the latest Sober virus outbreak ratcheted up the total number of bogus messages. The virus has, according to the company, accounted for more than 500,000 total infections since its latest outbreak.

CipherTrust draws its data from deployed IronMail appliances, the company's e-mail security product. Based on data received from more than 4,000 of the devices,the company reported several other spam trends.

Most noteworthy, the company noted that over the last six months, its software has been identifying an average of 170,000 new infected zombie computers each day. "Since the Sober outbreak, the number of new zombies sending spam and virus messages increased by nearly 50 percent, bringing the average total number to more than 250,000 new infected IPs each day," the company said in a statement.

mhall@internet.com

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