Pharmaceutical Industry Today

Symantec Announces January 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence Report

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — (Marketwire) — 01/25/11 — Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced the publication of its January 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence Report. Analysis reveals that following a two-week dramatic decline in spam levels, spam now accounts for 78.6 percent of all email traffic, the lowest rate since March 2009, when the global spam rate was 75.7 percent of all email traffic. The volume of spam in circulation in January 2011 was 65.9% lower than for the same period one year ago in January 2010, when the spam rate was 83.9% of all email traffic.

The recent decline, beginning December 25 and continuing through January 1, was the result of both a halt in the spam-sending activities of three botnets — Rustock, Lethic and Xarvester — and also unrest among pharmaceutical spam-sending gangs. During this two week period, spam volumes declined 58 percent from 80.2 billion spam emails per day to 33.5 billion spam emails each day, reminiscent of declines experienced when California-based ISP McColo was taken offline in late 2008 and continuing into early 2009.

“The closure of spam affiliate, Spamit, was partially responsible for the disruption to spam output,” said MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Paul Wood, Symantec.cloud. “However, there are likely other factors at work, such as consolidation and restructuring of pharmaceutical spam operations which has led to instability in the market likely to be exploited as a business opportunity by other spam gangs. We expect to see more pharmaceutical spam in 2011 as new pharmaceutical spam brands emerge and botnets compete for their business.”

In May 2010, pharmaceutical spam experienced peak levels when up to 85% of spam was related to pharmaceutical products. However, in January 2011, MessageLabs Intelligence found that pharmaceutical spam accounted for about 59.1% of all spam.

Since the end of 2010, MessageLabs Intelligence has witnessed shifting patterns related to pharmaceutical spam-sending. Previously, the Canadian Pharmacy brand was the most prolific of the pharmaceutical spam brands however, when Spamit shut down in October 2010, the brand disappeared as affiliates switched to sending spam for other brands.

It is no secret the major role that botnets play in spamming and in 2010, spam-sending botnets were responsible for as much as 88 percent of the world’s spam falling to 77 percent by the end of the year. Previously, Rustock had been responsible for 47.5 percent of all spam, approximately 44.1 billion spam emails each day, making it the single, largest spam-sending botnet. Both Lethic and Xarvester accounted for less than 0.5 percent of all spam each.

“At various points during Rustock’s history, the botnet has often exhibited irregular spamming patterns by sending huge volumes of spam before going quiet for several weeks at a time,” Wood said. “But throughout 2010, its spamming pattern was more regular and it had been active non-stop until December 2010. Our investigation revealed no evidence of Rustock being disrupted in any way either by law enforcement or through other action.”

Since January 10, all three botnets have resumed their spam-sending operations but not at their previous levels. Since its return, Rustock, previously the single largest spam-sending botnet, is now responsible for 17.5 percent of all spam in January. The Bagle botnet has now replaced Rustock as the largest spam-sending botnet with output at 20 percent of all spam, but Rustock maintains its position as the largest sender of pharmaceutical spam with 80 percent of its output in January related to pharmaceuticals.

During the two weeks that Rustock was dormant, it was being used for click-fraud to generate fake referrals for click-through expenses.

Other report highlights:

Spam: In January 2011, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources was 78.6 percent (1 in 1.3 emails), a decrease of 3.1 percentage points since December.

Viruses: The global ratio of email-borne viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources was one in 364.8 emails (0.274 percent) in January, a decrease of .03 percentage points since December. In January, 65.1 percent of email-borne malware contained links to malicious websites, a decrease of 2.5 percentage points since December.

Endpoint Threats: Threats against endpoint devices such as laptops, PCs and servers may penetrate an organization in a number of ways, including drive-by attacks from compromised websites, Trojan horses and worms that spread by copying themselves to removable drives. Analysis of the most frequently blocked malware for the last month revealed that the Sality.AE virus was the most prevalent. Sality.AE spreads by infecting executable files and attempts to download potentially malicious files from the Internet.

Phishing: In January, phishing activity was 1 in 409.7 emails (0.244 percent), an increase of 0.004 percentage points since December.

Web security: Analysis of web security activity shows that 44.1 percent of malicious domains blocked were new in January, an increase of 7.9 percentage points since December. Additionally, 21.8 percent of all web-based malware blocked was new in January, a decrease of 3.1 percentage points since last month. MessageLabs Intelligence also identified an average of 2,751 new websites per day harboring malware and other potentially unwanted programs such as spyware and adware, a decrease of 21.5 percent since December.

Geographical Trends:
Oman became the most spammed in October with a spam rate of 88.8 percent.
In the US, 78.8 percent of email was spam and 78.3 percent in Canada. Spam levels in the UK were 78.7 percent.
In The Netherlands, spam accounted for 79.4 percent of email traffic, while spam levels reached 77.8 percent in Germany, 79.8 percent in Denmark and 77.3 percent in Australia.
Spam levels in Hong Kong reached 79.2 percent and 77.2 percent in Singapore. Spam levels in Japan were at 75.2 percent and 84.6 percent in China. In South Africa, spam accounted for 80.0 percent of email traffic.
South Africa remained the most targeted by email-borne malware with 1 in 132.2 emails blocked as malicious in January.
In the UK, 1 in 178.2 emails contained malware. In the US virus levels were 1 in 771.0 and 1 in 212.3 for Canada. In Germany, virus levels reached 1 in 501.1, 1 in 1,215.0 in Denmark, 1 in 858.7 for The Netherlands.
In Australia, 1 in 667.4 emails were malicious and, 1 in 549.9 for Hong Kong, for Japan it was 1 in 1,233.0 compared with 1 in 733.3 for Singapore and 1 in 644.6 for China.

Vertical Trends:
In January, the most spammed industry sector with a spam rate of 82.8 percent continued to be the Automotive sector.
Spam levels for the Education sector were 80.6 percent, 79.1 percent for the Chemical & Pharmaceutical sector, 78.8 percent for IT Services, 77.9 percent for Retail, 77.2 percent for Public Sector and 77.4 percent for Finance.
In January, Government/Public Sector remained the most targeted industry for malware with 1 in 40.9 emails being blocked as malicious.
Virus levels for the Chemical & Pharmaceutical sector were 1 in 439.0, 1 in 497.8 for the IT Services sector, 1 in 714.9 for Retail, 1 in 194.3 for Education and 1 in 676.4 for Finance.

Local drug makers depend too much on imported ingredients

Despite concerted efforts to produce various types of medicines, Vietnam’s pharmaceutical firms still struggle to overtake foreign competitors due to their strong dependence on imported ingredients.

“We are focusing solely on making common medicines, while overlooking producing materials. We have to import around 700 tons of vitamin C every year as none of local drug maker makes it. We also have to buy cancer treatment drugs at high prices from abroad,” said Phung Ha, head of the Chemical Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry is growing at a slow pace since 90 percent of pharmaceutical materials in the country were bought from abroad, according to the World Health Organization. Most of them are vitamins and antibiotics, which mostly come from two main countries including China and India.

Depending too much on imported materials made local drug makers pay off, Ha said, adding that many enterprises have incurred losses from the stronger dollar.

While local makers can only produce common medicines, foreign pharmaceutical enterprises offer wide ranges of drugs, which are distributing to pharmacies nationwide.

With strong financial funds, they also captured lot of market shares by offering big commissions to hospitals and distributors and carrying out many marketing packs.

Analysts estimate foreign giants including Zuellig Pharma, Mega Product and Diethelm make an annual revenue of up to VND1 trillion (US$50 million) in Vietnam.

“Most local pharmaceutical firms achieved the GMP [Good Manufacturing Practice] standard. However, their techniques remain low and their products are identical,” said Dr. Nguyen Hai Nam, head of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Faculty of the Hanoi University of Pharmacy.

“For example, most drug makers produce generic drugs, which have low values. They make 69 percent out of the total amount of drugs on the market”.

Statistics from the Department of Pharmaceutical Management, under the Ministry of Health, show there are 260 different brand names for the same pain-relief medicine, 223 for the same vitamin.

Cao Minh Quang, deputy minister of health, said “researching advanced pharmaceutical technologies requires large investment funds and takes long time.”

“Therefore, the government should strongly finance local drug makers, as well as offer tax exemptions”.

There are around 178 pharmaceutical enterprises in Vietnam, and 50 percent of them gained the GMP standard.

With the population of around 86 million, the Southeast country is a potential market for both domestic and foreign drug makers.

Many international pharmaceutical giants have entered the country, including French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis, Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline, France’s second-largest drug maker Servier, the US’s Pfizer and Switzerland’s Novatis Group.

Vietnam’s pharmacy industry will continue to make an average growth rate of 25 percent per year, making revenue of nearly $2 billion and $6.1 billion in 2013 and 2019 respectively, according to the British healthcare company BMI.