Via their latest Symantec MessageLabs Intelligence antivirus review, Norton is warning that the risk from web threats has rocketed about 20% over the same time last year. And that analysis revealed the worrying statistic that of the domains which were blocked in 2010 as malicious, nearly 90% of them were legitimate, but had been compromised with malware that had been embedded without the owners being aware there was a problem.

The antivirus review also highlighted a new phishing threat which attacks under the guise of a PDF Reader Update. More than 26,000 attacks using this technique had been stopped and the scam was built around trying to collect victims’ bank and credit card details.

In general, phishing emails accounted for one in every 558 emails, or roughly 0.18%.

In July, the number of email-borne viruses which originated from new and what the industry call previously unknown sources, totaled one in just over 300 emails, or 0.3%, which was down a touch on June.

Endpoint threats – those that attack endpoint devices which include servers, PCs and laptops – continue to be a major hazard; one made worse by the increasing use of removable drives and memory sticks. And one of the most dangerous pieces of malware is reported to be the Sality.AE virus, which spreads as a download from the internet and via removable drives.

The Norton antivirus review also detailed the various vertical trends when it comes to spam and viruses. Amongst other findings, it concluded that the most spammed industry sector in June was engineering. This had the dubious distinction of achieving a spam rate of 92.6%.

Next came the retail sector with 89.9 and ironically, the IT sector scored an unimpressive 89.6% and education on 89.1%. The chemical and pharmaceutical sector weighed in with 89%, followed by 87.4% for finance and 87.3% for the public sector.

The engineering sector continued to cover itself in glory; in July it became the most malware targeted industry with roughly one in 112 emails being blocked as having malicious intent, or containing malicious content. As for the other sectors, the number of malicious emails was one in 227 for education; for finance (1-246); IT (1-377); chemical and pharmaceutical (1-449); and, retail (1-706).

Guest Article by Neil Camp