Postini Reports Record 500 Per Cent Increase In IM Attacks During May

Published 7th June 2006

IM volume jumps 138 per cent compared to April; legitimate email accounts for just 14 per cent of all email...

Postini today announced its systems registered a 138 per cent increase in corporate Instant Messaging (IM) traffic and a 500 per cent increase in IM attacks during May. Clearly demonstrating that hackers see the opportunity in compromising IM and underscoring the need for businesses to secure their networks from unwanted IM traffic.

Postini also stopped numerous IM viruses and worms such as Browaf, Tilebot, and Khoobe from infiltrating customers’ networks.

“The fact that IM messages more than doubled in just one month shows the rate companies are adopting IM as a mainstream business communications tool,” said Andrew Lochart, senior director of marketing for Postini. “The sheer volume of IM attacks is a dramatic demonstration that we’re in an environment where hackers, knowing that most organisations are still unprotected against IM malware, are rapidly adopting IM for their attacks.”

“That being said, IM attacks are still only a fraction of the number of email attacks, so it’s important companies keep up their guard on both fronts,” Lochart concluded.

In May, Postini also processed more than 25 billion email messages, a 13 per cent increase from April, with more than 86 per cent of all traffic being malicious or unwanted content.

Out of the 25 billion email messages processed by Postini’s global data centers, 65 per cent of those messages were rejected at the network layer, the only place to stop attacks like DHAs (directory harvest attacks) and DoS (denial of service), where there is no content in the body of the message to analyse with standard techniques.

Postini continued to block all email-borne viruses for its customers, based on its patented PREEMPT™ heuristic technology, as well multiple virus scan engines.

The top five viruses for May were:

Virus Name Quantity Blocked
MyTob Variants 5,206,192
Netsky 2,492,450
Swen 1,340,982
Mydoom 803,051
LovGate 788,252

Postini’s StatTrak™ is available to users at www.postini.com/stats and provides the most up-to-date statistics on the latest viruses, spam and DHAs.