No Summer Vacation for Spam or Bots

Once you're done vacuuming the pool and watering the garden, you might also want to run some anti-spyware and PC-protection software on a regular basis this summer.

A new security report warns PC- and mobile-device users that spam and botnets are worse than ever. According to a McAfee report released this week, spam has spiked 141 percent since March. The Spam volumes have increased 141 percent since March, continuing the longest streak of increasing spam volumes ever. The Q2 Threats Report also shows a dramatic jump in botnets and increasing security threat from Auto-Run malware.

The biggest botnet peak had been last October. Right now, more than 14 million PCs are infected.In just a 30-day period, the Auto-Run malware had hit 27 million user files. The exploit, which impacts Windows' Auto-Run features doesn't even need any help from users to do its damage and travels mostly via portable storage devices like USBs. Currently it's the top malware worldwide.

“The jump in bot and spam activity we saw in the last three months is alarming, and the threat from Auto-Run malware continues to grow,” said Mike Gallagher of McAfee Avert Labs. “The expansion of these infections is a grave reminder of the potential harm that can be caused by unprotected computers in homes and businesses.”

The average daily infection rate is 150,000 computers, which amounts to 20 percent of the personal computers bought daily. The top geographic area being hit is South Korea, which saw nearly a 50 percent jump in infections. The United States tops the list with 15 percent of the new zombie computers.

The news on the spam side isn't any brighter, with volume growing by over 117 billion emails daily. Spam is growing at a pace of 33 percent more each month. The newest targets are the most popular user applications, such as Twitter, though social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are still favorite spam targets.

Facebook and MySpace remain strong attack vectors for cybercriminals. In May, spam messages on social networks pointed users to 4,300 new Koobface files.

Photo courtesy of www.flickr.com via creativecommons.org.