Attack e-mail on the rise
The number of e-mails containing attack attachments jumped eight-fold in the third quarter over the same period last year, according to a report released Monday by IT security firm Sophos Inc.
The research by Burlington, Mass.-based Sophos found one in every 416 e-mail messages contained an attachment that could harm one’s computer, up from one in every 3,333 messages last year.
Sophos officials say PCs running the Windows operating system are most at risk for infection.
“For Apple Mac and Unix lovers, these major spam attacks just mean a clogged-up inbox, not an infected operating system. But organized criminals are causing havoc for Windows users in the hunt for cold hard cash,” Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, says in a statement one hour loan. “Too many people are clicking without thinking, exposing themselves to hackers who are hell-bent on gaining access to confidential information and raiding bank accounts. The advice is simple: you should never open unsolicited attachments, however tempting they may appear.”
The United States remains the country that produces the most spam with some 18.9 percent of all unwarranted messages, followed by Russia and Turkey each producing 8 percent.