Top of the Zombie charts: Verizon, Telecom Italia and Brasil Telecom

Commtouch 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:

• Top domains with the most infected machines (aka zombies) based on Commtouch Labs research include: Telecom Italia, Brasil Telecom, and Verizon
• Spam levels throughout the second quarter averaged 77%, ranging from a low of 64% to a peak of 94% of all email towards the end of the quarter
• 10 million zombie IP addresses are active each day, on average
• United States drops to 9th place in number of zombies globally. Turkey is #1 with 11% of all zombies
• Pharmaceutical spam is the most popular topic, comprising 40% of all spam
• Phishing scams took advantage of higher education community, as well as Google adwords users

More details, including samples of spam and malware messages, are available in the Commtouch Q2 2008 Email Threats Trend Report, available from Commtouch Labs.