U.S. email security firm Postini also issued a bleak report on spam, finding that the number of unwanted messages has tripled since June, and that it currently accounts for 91 percent of all email.
“This dramatic rise in spam attacks on corporate networks has the Internet under a state of siege,” said Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing at Postini. “Spammers are increasingly aggressive and sophisticated in their techniques, and protection from spam has become a front-burner issue again. Spam has evolved from a tool for nuisance hackers and annoying marketers to one for criminal enterprises.”
Spammers are also continuously evolving their tactics, Druker said. Image spam and Microsoft Office document spam now makes up as much as 30 percent of all junk messages, up from 2 percent in 2005.
The study also describes the lengths hackers go to send spam that has a greater chance of bypassing updated corporate anti-spam filtering technology. Hackers use techniques such as re-arranging as many as 25 tiny images into an email message, or use animated GIF attachments to bypass filters.
Postini has detected 7 billion spam emails in November, compared with 2.5 billion in June. The company tracked a 59 percent spike in spam from September through November, and the daily volume of spam rose by 120 percent over the past year.
According a new study from the European Commission, spam messages are choking servers and accounting for between 50-80 percent of all sent emails. The commission also determined the financial impact of spam to be $51.1 billion worldwide in lost productivity, new filtering technology purchases, network upgrades and other associated costs. Spam costs firms up to $1,000 per employee.
EU media commission Viviane Reding implored EU governments to step up to the plate to pass legislation against spam. The EU report found that only the Netherlands and Finland were making progress against spam by enforcing a 2002 law.
A EU spokesman said the Dutch were able to enforce compliance with the law by implementing fines. EU officials are working on drafting tougher legislation, which it will push for next year that would make it easier to prosecute spammers.
Additionally, the report said that the U.S. accounts for 21.6 percent of all spam coming into the 25-country EU. China was the second biggest producer with 13.4 percent.