In August, Symantec discovered 213 new variants of malicious programs for mobile devices

In addition, experts have found 469 new vulnerabilities, which is 13% higher than in August 2012.

Symantec has introduced a virus activity report for August 2013. Experts analyzed the level of spam, the most common scams on social networks, the number of malicious programs for mobile devices, and phishing attacks.

The authors of the study say that the most popular form of fraud in social networks has been spreading false information about the sale of the goods at a discount. This type of attack accounted for 82% of all attacks carried out in the social networks.

In the field of data breaches in August there was a kind of lull - only seven notices. However, even with nine violations that happened earlier in 2013, also said in August. Thus, from the beginning of the year all over the world Symantec managed to record 125 violations related to the loss of data.

In August of this year was also recorded 213 new variants of malicious programs for mobile devices. In addition, experts have found 469 new vulnerabilities, which is 13% higher than in August 2012.


The level of global spam in the last month in the summer of this year fell by 2.4% compared to July, and the figure reached 65.2%. Most of the spam hit the Saudis - 78.6% of email traffic were spam messages. The main sources of spam were India (6.98%), the USA (6.66%) and Spain (5.72%).

The leader in sending phishing messages was Japan with a share of 54.74%. On the second place is Hong Kong (16.94%) and the USA (10.16%).

Detail report from Symantec is available at: http://www.symantec.com/security_response/publications/monthlythreatreport.jsp (27 pages, 1 MB PDF file)