Marshal TRACE Midyear Threat Report Warns 45 Percent of Internet Users Are at Risk From New Cyber Criminal Tactics

Cyber criminals are using 'blended attacks' to distribute malware and links to hacked websites via email on an unprecedented scale. Unpatched browsers are putting more than 45 percent of Internet users at risk when they visit legitimate Websites infected with malicious code. Three botnets are responsible for 75 percent of all spam, pumping out billions of messages every hour through zombie clients and being used to launch mass attacks on Websites. These are the key findings of the Marshal Threat Research and Content Engineering (TRACE) report for the first half of 2008.

In an alarming new development, spam sent from webmail accounts that had been automatically created using CAPTCHA-breaking technology was seen to be on the increase, rendering common anti-spam defenses such as reputation less effective. CAPTCHA or Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers & Humans Apart was developed by Carnegie Mellon University to prevent spam robots exploiting Web forms.