February Spam statistics from SoftScan

London, UK, March 6th 2008 - SoftScan announced today that spam levels remain steady, accounting for 96.47% of all email scanned by SoftScan during February. However, SoftScan has noted in the last couple of weeks subtle changes to the delivery and format of "bulk mail" spam, which may indicate that spam levels will increase once again in the near future.

The change is in messages sent out in vast quantities apparently by the same few providers. Similarities observed in the past in the technical makeup of the messages have led SoftScan to conclude that these messages are written on templates specifically designed to have maximum effect on bypassing anti-spam filters.

"It's too early yet to be absolutely certain, but a change in the template indicates that the spammers are trying out new tactics, which is normally a precursor to a larger blitz of spam," comment Diego d'Ambra, CTO of SoftScan. "Junk mail from these few providers seems to come in waves and from the distribution you can see that there are some very successful spammers that cover a large part of the market. In addition, we've also seen a change in the delivery of these messages. This may mean that the botnets have been recruiting significant numbers of new zombies or that the spammers are trying to find new ways to bypass blacklist technology."

Virus levels remained typically low during the month accounting for just 0.09% of all email scanned. The top five virus families in February 08 were:

1 - phishing: 85.92%
2 - dropper: 7.07%
3 - diehard: 2.14%
4 - netsky: 1.37%
5 - downloader: 0.97%