Google: Current spam levels makes ‘Storm’ look small

Spam levels in the second half of the year have increased so much that it has made those seen during 2007's Storm' virus attack look small, according to Google.

In 2007, the Storm virus caused havoc, pushing spam activity to unprecedented levels at the time and sustaining them for months. The security community eventually caught up, and by 2008 it had ceased to become so much of a problem.

However, figures from Google's spam security service Postini shows that a surge in payload spam activity during Q2 and Q3 had made the levels during Storm's peak look small in comparison.

Google said that its Postini data centres have blocked more than 100 million viruses every day during the height of the attack.

More than half (55 per cent) of the viruses were messages like fake IRS notices and 33 per cent fake package tracking attachments, which Google said makes you wonder who would actually fall for the tricks and click on them.

But Adam Swidler of the Google Postini Services team said in a blog post: "At these volumes, it only takes a fraction of the recipients being fooled for the spammers to add hundreds of computers to their botnets every day."