India Vulnerable To Virus Attack

India Vulnerable To Virus Attack

Techtree News Staff, Sep 10, 2007 1249 hrs IST

India remains the most vulnerable region in terms of virus attacks, with 1 in every 27.8 emails being infected.

With Internet becoming part of life for more and more Indians, and emails being an essential source to stay in touch, a recent study conducted by messaging security and management services provider - MessageLabs - revealed that the number of malicious Websites is on rise and 1 in every 28 emails is infected.

StormWorm is a new virus on the loose. It uses virtual postcards and YouTube videos for its attack. The study revealed that StormWorm has affected an estimated 1.8 million computers worldwide.

The number of emails, which contained links to malicious code, increased significantly in August to 19.5% - showing a rise of 19% compared to the July figure of 0.5%.

According to the study, India remained the most vulnerable region in terms of virus attacks, with 1 in every 27.8 emails being infected and with spam attacks (or unsolicited bulk emails) accounting for 29.5% of the total emails received in the country in August.

Also the analysis on Web trends in August revealed that a daily average of 1,772 new malicious sites were identified and blocked - an average increase of 783 per day since July.

In August, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and unknown sources for which the recipients' addresses were deemed valid was 74%, an increase of 3% on the previous month.

During this period, Israel received the highest number of spam attack at the rate of 70.7%, while France had the most significant increase in spam levels at a 9.5%, followed by Spain at 9.2%.

However during August, telecom sector was termed as the second most spammed segment across all segments with the highest increase in spam activity where it rose by 22.3% since July. And agriculture ranks as the most spammed with 66.9%, while finance is the least spammed one with 30.5%.