Sunnyvale, Calif. – July 7, 2008 – Commtouch® (Nasdaq: CTCH) today released its second quarter 2008 Email Threats Trend Report, based on the automated analysis of billions of email messages weekly. The report examines recent trends in email threats, especially the role of millions of dynamic zombie computers actively sending spam and malware every day.
Highlights of the report include:
“Zombie networks or ‘botnets’ have become so enormous and agile, they are flooding email with increasingly malicious threats,” said Amir Lev, Commtouch’s chief technology officer and president. “Many technologies attempt to identify and block email from senders known for sending malicious content, but they are not updated rapidly enough to keep up. By the time these lists are updated the threat has shifted to another set of zombies, leaving customers unprotected. On the one hand, ISPs have an obligation to protect their customers from unwanted email; however, they also have a responsibility to ensure that their customers are not a source of unwanted email by being part of these botnets.”
Commtouch Recurrent Pattern Detection™ technology identifies and blocks email threats, including increasingly malicious malware and phishing outbreaks. Dynamic detection of zombie IPs provides effective protection against zombies, without causing high false positives.
More details, including samples of spam and malware messages, are available in the Commtouch Q2 2008 Email Threats Trend Report, available from Commtouch Labs at: http://www.commtouch.com/documents/Commtouch_Q208_Email_Trends.pdf.
For daily updates about top zombie domains, or “hot spots,” see: http://www.commtouch.com/Site/Resources/ZombieMonitor.asp#bottom
NOTE: Reported global spam levels are based on Internet email traffic as measured from unfiltered data streams, not including internal corporate traffic. Therefore global spam levels will differ from the quantities reaching end user inboxes, due to several possible layers of filtering at the ISP level.
About Commtouch
Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ: CTCH) is the source of proven messaging and web security technology for scores of security companies and service providers, founded on a unique datacenter-based approach. Commtouch's expertise in building efficient, massive-scale security services has resulted in its patented technology being used to mitigate Internet threats for thousands of organizations and hundreds and millions of users in over 100 countries. Commtouch's Data Centers automatically analyze billions of transactions in real-time to identify new spam, malware and zombie outbreaks as they are initiated. Commtouch's unmatched suite of security offerings - anti-spam, virus detection, reputation and zombie intelligence services - work together in a comprehensive feedback loop. Commtouch was founded in 1991, is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Sunnyvale, Calif. For more information and real-time statistics and trends, see: http://www.commtouch.com and the Commtouch Café blog at: http://blog.commtouch.com/cafe.
Recurrent Pattern Detection, RPD, Zero-Hour and GlobalView are trademarks, and Commtouch is a registered trademark, of Commtouch Software Ltd. U.S. Patent No. 6,330,590 is owned by Commtouch.
Commtouch Contact:
Rebecca Steinberg Herson
rebeccah@commtouch.com
Tel: (US) 650-864-2112
(Int’l)+972-9-863-6877
