The rate of unwanted emails — commonly known as spam — dropped below 50% in June, the lowest rate in 12 years. The rate plunged to 49.7%, down 1.8% from May.
Surprisingly, the industry that sent the most spam emails in June was mining, with a spam rate of 56.1%. Manufacturing was second with 53.7%, and the construction industry was third at 53.3%. The data are collected and reported by security software maker Symantec.
Phishing and email-based malware rates also fell during June, but Symantec noted that 57.6 million new malware variants were created in June, up from 44.5 million in May and 29.2 million in April.
The industry facing the greatest number of targeted attacks and phishing was manufacturing, with a 22% rate in June, down from 41% in May. The finance, insurance and real estate industries each posted a 17% rate in this category, the same as the professional services industry.
Small firms with up to 500 employees were more likely to be the source of spam, sending about 53% of spam emails, while businesses with more than 2,500 employees spit out spam at a 52% rate.
Only one zero-day vulnerability was discovered in June, but it was a nasty one. The Adobe Flash Player CVE-2015-3113 Unspecified Heap Buffer Overflow Vulnerability. According to Symantec:
Attackers can exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code within the context of the application. Failed attempts will likely cause a denial-of-service condition; this can result in the attacker gaining complete control of the affected system.
The vulnerability affected computers using Adobe Flash Player versions 18.0.0.161 and earlier, and Adobe issued an update, 18.0.0.194, the next day.
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