Fortinet Released Threatscape Report for October 2008

As per the "Threatscape" report for October 2008 released by Fortinet, the malware attacks surged significantly.

The report says that scareware (malware rogue security apps) was the top malware category on the list for October 2008, with continuous increase in overall volume since April 2008 when 10 Million attacks were reported. In September 2008, the overall volume of malware attacks intercepted by the security vendor surged to 30 Million.

In terms of the regions most affected by malware attacks during October 2008, the report said that Japan was the most affected country with 38.6% of total malware, next came the US with 32.9% of all the malware attacks, and finally China that witnessed 25.1% of attacks. Fortinet further stated these regions topped in receiving the highest malware volume during October 2008.

Another threat that prominently emerged in the Fortinet's Threatscape report for the month of October 2008 was surging web traffic to malicious porn sites. phishing and spyware sites came next to pornography sites.

In addition, other threats that got place in the Threatscape report included malicious exploits. Security researchers and analysts working at the Fortinet's lab also revealed that out of 18 active exploits intercepted by them, 14 were categorized as highly critical, pointing that security threats are very dangerous and could lead to breakdown or compromise of the system.

Meanwhile, the spam volume showed a downward trend, as per the report. This downward trend in spam was reflected in dropping volume of e-mails tagged as spam during October 8-20, 2008, posting a fall of 10%.

With this first edition of Threatscape report, Fortinet aims at providing qualitative and broad content on emerging security threats to help consumers, customers and security researchers to better mitigate their online risks, said Derek Manky, Security Researcher at Fortinet, as reported by MarketWatch on November 3, 2008.

Though this was the scenario in October 2008, Fortinet researchers in September 2008 had said that they found new malware variants in the top ten list.

Related article: Fortinet Pinpoints Ten Biggest Threats

» SPAMfighter News - 11/20/2008