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from MSNBC on Thursday, December 12, 2002

Antivirus firm annual report paints bleak picture.

Some time next year, there will be more spam than real e-mail floating around the Internet. That's the conclusion drawn from annual statistics gathered by British e-mail filtering firm MessageLabs, which on Wednesday delivered disheartening news to e-mail users — delivery of unsolicited e-mail rose sharply in the second half of this year. The annual report also revealed that one in every 212 e-mails contained a computer virus.

MESSAGELABS SOFTWARE sorts through 10 million e-mails a day, filtering each note sent to one of its clients before sending it along to its rightful recipient. That means the firm inspects over 3 billion e-mails a year, making MessageLabs a popular source of virus and spam research data.

And according to MessageLabs Chief Technology Officer Mark Sunner, the data shows clearly that spammers are currently getting much better at what they do. For the entire year, an average of 1 in 12 e-mails were spam; but that number increased steadily in the past months. And by November, 1 in three e-mails were spam. Because of that trend, the company predicted that during 2003, spam will overtake real e-mail.

Sunner blamed the recent increase on technology improvement which make spammers' work easier.

"What could be behind (the increase) is the amount of tools and appliances available now to these companies. You can buy e-mail appliance boxes which will ship millions of e-mails in an hour," he said.

MessageLabs release might seem to contradict a report issued earlier this week by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which concluded that most Americans don't have a problem with spam at work. But the two studies measure different things, so they are not necessarily contradictory. The Pew report suggests that American workers only spend a few minutes a day dealing with spam — in large part because spam aimed at office workers is stopped by various technologies, like the MessageLabs service.

Still, with some 30 percent of all e-mail being "rubbish of one kind or another" — spam, viruses, or pornography — technology workers are engaged in a difficult fight to keep e-mail users from becoming overwhelmed.

"There is very much an arms race between people that are trying to get this stuff out there and people trying to prevent it," he said.

STAYING POWER

Another disturbing trend in 2002 — computer viruses that wouldn't go away. The Klez virus, which was introduced with little fanfare in the early part of this year, remains the world's most pesky computer bug. MessageLabs has now trapped 5 million copies of it, and it shows little signs of slowing down. In November, 423,000 copies of Klez were found. That compares to high-profile viruses like the LoveBug or the Anna Kournikova virus, which swept the globe quickly, but generally died down after a few weeks.

Klez is hard to spot because it arrives with randomly chosen subject lines and message body text.

Other viruses also proved to have staying power. Yaha, discovered in June, is still the world's second-most common bug.

VIRUS-LIKE SPAM

Sunner also said spam and computer viruses are beginning to merge, with commercial e-mail solicitations now arriving with virus-like characteristics. "Friendgreeting," released in October, claims to be a harmless electronic greeting card — but instead, it sends copies of itself to everyone in the recipient's e-mail address book.

There's also been a large uptick in spam "spoofing" — when a commercial e-mail solicitor pretends to send a note from an innocent third party in an attempt to trick the recipient into opening the advertisement. Internet users who've received angry messages from someone saying "stop sending me these e-mails," know how frustrating that can be to both victims. And the bad news is, there's not a lot people can do to prevent a spammer from picking up their e-mail address and putting it in the "From:" field of a spam message,

"In terms of spoofing there isn't a lot you personally can do to stop someone," Sunner said. "It's an inherent weaknesses in e-mail."

Expect more greeting cards, spoofing, and other virus-like tactics in 2003, the MessageLabs report says.

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