Press Release
POSTINI COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE UPDATE FOR APRIL HIGHLIGHTS SIGNIFICANT VIRUS ATTACKS AND WEB THREATS
Increase in Spyware and Adware Indicative of Rise in Web-Borne Security Threats
SAN CARLOS, CA, May 7, 2007 — Postini, a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions for email, instant messaging and the web, today announced that in April a series of significant email virus attacks, designed to expand botnet networks, contributed to a continued rise in global spam levels. For the month of April, more than 93% of all email traffic was spam and viruses. Postini also announced new research highlighting web security threats and compliance challenges.
The rise in web-borne security threats is evidenced by a 34.4% increase in adware, spyware and similar potentially unwanted programs compared to the previous month. Postini is also seeing blended threats, as hackers attempt to exploit email and the web in coordinated attacks. According to Postini, strains of the same family of malicious code that was found in the email virus attacks are increasingly being hosted on web sites.
"With viruses and potentially offensive material constantly being published and updated on web sites, businesses need real time protection against malware and inappropriate content," said Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing for Postini. "Web security solutions that rely on web crawling — or periodically scouring the web for threats—rather than actually scanning the URL each time it is requested can leave users exposed."
In April new variants of January's storm worm launched significant attacks against businesses worldwide. These variants were born from emails with "love" related subject lines with an attached executable file and subsequently and from emails with a "Worm Alert!" subject that contain an encrypted, password protected zip file that appears to be from tech support help desks. Similar attacks took place with the subject lines focused on "missile attacks" starting World War III. All of the variants contained attachments with a Trojan virus that when activated, turned the infected computer into a bot-net zombie that could be used to send spam and launch other network attacks.
After a brief lull in March, email spam returned to record levels in April. The volume of email spam has gone up by 135% since September 2006 and is up 36% since January 2007.
| Top Ten Virus for April: | |
| new malware.br | 11,620,130 |
| netsky | 5,829,826 |
| trojan.adub | 5,204,015 |
| nuwar@mm!zip | 4,824,606 |
| nuwar | 3,465,057 |
| generic malware.a!zip | 2,850,391 |
| stration | 2,566,748 |
| nuwar@mm!rar | 2,174,403 |
| mime | 1,947,776 |
| sober | 1,538,261 |
| Total Viruses in April: | 47,778,729 |
| Top Web Filtering Blocks by Category: | |
| Chat & Instant Messaging | 23.20 % |
| Search & Portals | 11.36 % |
| Business & Services | 6.40 % |
| Hosting & IT Services | 5.00 % |
| Music | 4.68 % |
| Blogs / Newsgroups | 3.82 % |
| News & Magazines | 3.68 % |
| Pornography | 3.49 % |
| Dating & Relationships | 3.34 % |
| Films & TV | 3.12 % |
Postini's StatTrak™ is available at www.postini.com/stats and provides the most up-to-date statistics on the latest viruses, spam and other attacks. Data on web-based threats is compiled in conjunction with ScanSafe.
About Postini
Postini is the global leader in on-demand communications security, compliance, and productivity solutions for email, instant messaging and the web. Postini's award-winning services are designed to protect customers from viruses, spam, phishing, fraud, and other attacks; encrypt messages to ensure confidentiality and privacy; and archive communications to ensure compliance with regulations and to prepare for e-discovery.
More than 35,000 businesses rely on Postini everyday to protect them from a wide range of threats, ensure reliable communications reduce compliance and legal risks, and enable the intelligent management and enforcement of enterprise policies to protect intellectual property, reputations, and business relationships. For more information please contact Postini at info@postini.com or visit http://www.postini.com.
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