SoftScan today announced the latest virus and spam statistics for June 2006.

The percentage of email classified as viruses remains low at 0.36 per cent despite an attack launched by Bagle during June and the percentage of spam was marginally higher at 85.11 per cent. However, SoftScan attributes this change to be due to less business related email as the holiday season begins, rather than an increase in spam overall.

On the 21st June SoftScan reported that a Bagle variant was spammed out over an eighteen hour period, particularly targeting some European countries. In this latest development, Bagle was sent as a password protected zip file, with the password sent as an image displayed in the body of the email. This makes it more difficult for some anti-virus vendors to detect the virus, but as SoftScan predicted, having to enter the password no doubt made many users think twice about opening the attachment anyway, thus preventing an epidemic.

However, it wasn't all bad news in June on the virus front. Three arrests in the UK and Finland of members believed to be a part of the M00P gang is a significant breakthrough in the fight against malware.

Top five Virus families for June are:

1. phishing: 48 per cent
   
2. netsky: 17 per cent
   
3. mytob: 15 per cent
   
4. bagle: 6 per cent
   
5. mydoom: 3 per cent

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.softscan.co.uk

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