Throughout the month of March and first half of April 2005, CipherTrust researchers conducted an analysis of data received from the Company's global network of IronMail appliances, which protect more than 10 million enterprise e-mail inboxes globally.
The analysis confirms the significant threat presented by the dramatic growth in the number of new zombies per day.
A zombie is a machine typically connected to a broadband connection that is maliciously infected by a worm or virus without the owners' knowledge. Once a machine is infected, the new zombie awaits instructions from zombie network operators that range from launching a Denial of Service (DoS) attack to sending spam and phishing e-mails through the zombie machine.
"Unprotected computers around the world are vulnerable to compromise within minutes of connecting to the Internet," said Dr. Paul Judge, CipherTrust chief technology officer. "These zombies are then used for all sorts of nefarious activities, including sending spam and viruses."
In addition, CipherTrust updated its findings related to origins of spam by message count. The Company found that approximately 57% of all spam originates in the United States. Although this number is down from nearly 86% during June and July 2004, the United States still ranks highest in terms of spam originations. South Korea ranks second highest with almost 16%.
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