You would think the problem of e-mail spam from so-called Canadian pharmacies (which are actually fronts for criminal organizations in Russia and elsewhere) couldn’t get worse.

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

According to the latest data from McAfee and MX Logic:

Both security firms see “pharmaceutical spam,” at almost 90% of all spam, as the single largest type of spam in terms of content, with one in particular, known as Canadian Pharmacy, the undisputed dominant force.

Criminals sending spam rely on hijacked “zombie” machines that have been taken over by malware, and the number of zombies around the world is said to be rising by an estimated 150,000 every day. “In the U.S. alone, there are 2.1 million new zombies, up 33% from the last period,” the McAfee report states. McAfee estimates there are a total 14 million computers “enslaved by cybercriminal botnets.”

Researchers also said that more than 90 percent of all e-mail can be classified as spam — which would suggest that more than 80 percent of ALL e-mails are pharmacy spam.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 9:20 am and is filed under pharmacy spam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.