The reports highlights that spammers have started shifting attack tactics from botnets to compromised email accounts.

December 13, 2011 /India PRwire/ -- Cyberoam, the innovator of identity-based UTM solutions, today announced a special feature of Oct 2011 Internet threats trend report, prepared in collaboration with its partner, Commtouch.

The report first of its own kind has revealed that 70% spam attacks were launched on Yahoo (27%), Facebook (23%) and Gmail (19%). The fact highlights that user of these mail accounts are prone to more attacks.

In a disturbing trend, spammers have started shifting attack tactics from botnets to compromised email accounts, wherever possible. This has particularly gathered pace after the Microsoft Consortium took down the Rustock botnet family which used to have a 30% share of global spam. Typical compromises happened due to access from public Wi-Fi networks, use of easy-to-guess passwords and clicking on a link received from a "trusted" friend in Facebook. Whopping 23% users did nothing to remediate their account, believing it to be a one-off incident.

Abhilash Sonwane, Sr. VP, Product Management, Cyberoam says, "Trust is a major factor behind spammers switching tactics to email and social media. Most of us will click on a malware link, if it comes from a close friend on Facebook. The use of these attacks for spam and scams are expected to increase in future. Users must take basic precautions when they access these in public domains as well as observing sound password management."

Cyberoam recommends account-owners to consider using a password manager that stores all passwords, generates new ones and sync them between their PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets. It is also wise to uncheck the "remember me" box when you log into your email or Facebook and not to follow links in Facebook that accompany some hysterical or generic text such as "check this out!" or scoop such as "Osama Bin Laden death video".

Source: Press release distribution via India PRwire

Notes to Editor

About Cyberoam

Cyberoam Identity-based UTM appliances offer comprehensive protection against existing and emerging Internet threats, including viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, pharming and more. Cyberoam UTM delivers the complete range of security features such as stateful inspection firewall, VPN, gateway anti-virus, gateway anti-malware, gateway anti-spam, intrusion prevention system, content filtering in addition to bandwidth management and multiple link management over a single platform. The Cyberoam solution portfolio includes Cyberoam iView, a logging and reporting appliance solution, Cyberoam SSL VPN appliances and Cyberoam Endpoint Data Protection suite to protect data and manage assets over endpoints in organizations. Cyberoam is certified with CheckMark UTM Level 5 Certification, ICSA Labs, and is a member of the Virtual Private Network Consortium. Cyberoam was positioned as a "Visionary" in the Magic Quadrant for SMB Multi-function Firewalls by Gartner. Cyberoam has also continuously received SC Magazine's 5 Star Rating. Cyberoam has offices in Woburn, MA and India. For more information, please visit www.cyberoam.com.

About Elitecore Technologies

Elitecore Technologies Limited is the global provider of Cyberoam UTM appliances. Elitecore's other divisions include CRESTEL Convergent Billing Solution that meets the voice, data, video billing and customer care requirements of Tier-1 service providers and 24online Billing and Bandwidth Management Solution for hotels, hotspots and Internet service providers. Elitecore has a strong R&D base and support center in India. It has sustained a healthy growth rate of over 75 % since inception. For more information, please visit www.elitecore.com

For more information, please contact:
Akhilesh Shukla (Manager corporate communication)