FaceTime Releases Findings for 2007

BELMONT, Calif. -- FaceTime Communications, the leading provider of solutions that control greynets and manage unified communications in the enterprise, today announced its initial findings of 2007 malware trends affecting today’s enterprise networks through instant messaging (IM), P2P file sharing and chat applications. During 2007 there were 1,088 incidents reported over all IM, P2P, and chat vectors.

Within the IM category, 19 percent of threats were reported on the AOL Instant Messenger network, 45 percent on MSN Messenger, 20 percent on Yahoo! Instant Messenger and 15 percent on all other IM networks including Jabber-based IM private networks. Attacks on these private networks have more than doubled in share since 2003, rising from seven percent of all IM attacks to 15 percent in 2007.

In 2007 researchers saw a shift in the non-IM vectors used to distribute viruses, malware and spyware. Most notable is the rise in IRC-distributed attacks: in 2006, IRC accounted for 58 percent of attacks, rising to 72 percent by year-end 2007.

“Threats over IM and P2P networks are occurring at an average rate of just over five unique incidents per day,” said Frank Cabri, vice president of marketing and product management for FaceTime. “Additionally, social networking sites are increasing in popularity resulting in a corresponding increase in malicious activity targeted at users of these sites.”

FaceTime Communications Inc.