Microsoft: 97% of e-mails are spam.

• Position: E-MAIL - Brief article

According to a 2008 Microsoft security report, only 3% of e-mails sent are wanted; 97% are spam messages that may contain viruses or other malicious software.

The report also found the global ratio of infected machines was 8.6 for every 1,000 uninfected machines.

Ed Gibson, chief cyber security adviser at Microsoft, told BBC News that the spike in spare is the result of higher capacity broadband, better operating systems, and higher power computers that allow criminals to easily send out billions of spare messages.

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Increasingly, the report found, hackers are employing common file formats--Microsoft Office documents and Adobe's PDF format--to deliver malicious programs. Attacks using PDF files increased sharply in the second half of 2008, Microsoft noted.

According to the BBC, however, the PDF vulnerabilities exploited by criminals have been...