According to a report published by a security firm in June, the level of spam emails which were sent this year has reached a record low. This phenomenon had not occurred for the last 12 years. Although in the last months the authorities took several provisions to identify the networks sending spam emails, the decline suggests that cyber attackers are now moving on to alternative methods to threaten users of cyberspace.

The 'Symantec Intelligence Report', published by the security firm Symantec, reveals that the overall spam rate during the month of June was less than 50% of the emails sent. This rate had not fallen below 50% since September 2003. 

Although this is good news for the users of cyberspace, it does not mean that they can loosen up on their security levels. The reason is that the amount of new malware variants which were created during the same period continued to increase. In fact, the number of different malware created during the month of June amounted to 57.6 million. These were a lot more than the 44.5 million which were created in May and the 29.2 million created in April.

Amongst the malware, the report indicated a rise in attacks caused by ransomware. In fact, these amounted to over 477,000 during June. This evidence has led Symantec Cyber Security Threat Analyst, Ben Nahorney to conclude that cyber attackers are moving on to other methods and means of threatening the users of cyberspace.

In the last months, British authorities have managed to break important networks through which spam emails were being sent. At the same time, internet providers across Europe joined forces and shared information about the networks sending spam emails, with the aim of understanding how they work and to limit their effectiveness.