Sophos: 'Email is becoming more secure?'

The proportion of emails containing dangerous software has plummeted in the first six months of this year compared to the same period last year.

Statistics from security firm Sophos show that one out of every 91 e-mails sent has only one virus or other types of malware, while last year's rate was "1. in 35 ".

" Email is really becoming more secure ," said Graham Cluley, Sophos senior technology consultant.

Not necessarily good news .

The information Sophos offers is not necessarily good news. Cyber ​​criminals cannot give up their activities yet. Instead, they are changing tactics to avoid detection and developing other types of malware, Cluley warned.

The malware author is turning his attention to trojan programs - a type of malware that can integrate keyloggers to send login information, passwords, credit card numbers, and bank accounts. online store . about a predetermined server.

Trojans are not like viruses, they are unable to replicate themselves. This Trojan accounts for 81% of the new malware that Sophos detected on the Internet.

Cyber ​​criminals now no longer want to "do big business" anymore. The reason is that once they send a series of emails containing viruses or trojans, security companies will quickly update the security application to make the effectiveness of the attacks significantly reduced. That's why the authors of malware types now tend to send only a few emails and focus on certain victims.

Meanwhile, many of the malicious code that has been around for a long time continues to spread on the Internet in large numbers. The cause of this problem is the hackers' "lazy to program new code". The second reason is that many people do not use anti-virus software, making them good prey for malware.

"Most famous" malware

Ranked number 2 and 3 in this list are Netsky-P and Zafi-B. Although they have appeared on the Internet for a long time, they still dominate the list of Sophos' most dangerous monthly software lists. These are all computer worms sent via email.

The most popular malware in 2006 was Sober-Z - a computer worm that only appeared earlier this year. But even though it just appeared, it quickly spread out on a large scale. Up to now, he still holds the No. 1 position on Sophos's list - accounting for about 22.4% of the malware sent via email.

In the Top 10 list of Sophos, there are "4 people of Mytob family". The variants of Mytob have the ability to disable security software, send multiple copies to email addresses in the address book on the infected system, download other malicious scripts, eat information theft .

In the list of Sophos, there are also Nyxem-D, Blackmail, Kama Sutra .

Hoang Dung