Malicious attacks today are numerous but, luckily, remain preventable with the right tools.
Botnets, a phenomenon in which a hacker takes control of many machines that are not his or her own, has made the growth of malicious activity much easier. A typical botnet attack includes Spam and Malware mass email campaigns. Unsurprisingly, the overall volume of Spam sent since 2011 has increased, a direct relation to the growth of these malicious botnet networks.
An average of 3.5 billion spam emails are sent from botnets each year.
Welcome to the era of targeted phishing
To pass through the most sophisticated of spam filters, cybercriminals are now moving towards "surgical" attacks. In advance of an attack, the hacker researches the recipient's identity and his family on social networks to finely craft an email attempting to mimic the interpersonal context, even when the recipient knows that a fraudulent email may be coming. This highly deceptive form of malicious spam is called "spear phishing".
Email's Oldest and Newest Challenge are One in the Same: Graymail
The widespread and increasing use of the Internet in the context of e-commerce and social media has had a significant impact on the content of user mailboxes. Indeed, they receive many more ads today, as well as social network notifications and other non-priority emails that overwhelm the inbox and bury priority or important mail. This voluminous body of mail, social media notifications and marketing messages, present a problem for providers, users, and feedback loops: they are not spam, except in users' minds (perhaps rightfully so, as they can be very annoying).
