Report: IM Attacks Hit Record Levels
By Ed Oswald, BetaNews
October 3, 2005, 4:10 PM
Instant messaging security firm IMLogic said on Monday that attacks on IM networks increased to record levels, multiplying by fourteen times through the first three quarters of this year.
"Over the past three months the nature of the IM threat has continued to evolve with increasing levels of sophistication and rates of infection demonstrated by IM worms and viruses," IMlogic CTO Jon Sakoda said.
By type of attack, 87 percent were worm-based, 12 percent hijacked file transfer to deliver viruses, and one percent utilized system vulnerabilities. Altogether, 713 different threats have been reported for IM and P2P applications.
IMLogic cautioned users of AIM and Yahoo from becoming complacent simply because MSN is the target of most attacks.
"While the majority of IM threat outbreaks continue to occur on a single network, during the third quarter of 2005 IM virus writers and hackers continue to increase the sophistication of their attacks," the report says.
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