MessageLabs latest Intelligence Report for March 2008 has revealed that the Storm botnet was responsible for 20% of all SPAM (junk email) during the first quarter of 2008. Roughly 78% of Storm's messages were selling male enlargement drugs, replica watches or spam of a sexual nature. Many others contained links to malware or had been designed to launch phishing attacks.

In March 2008, the global ratio of spam in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources, was 73.8% (1 in 1.36 emails), an increase of 1.1% on the previous month. Spam levels for Q1 2008 are 1.1% lower than Q4 2007 and 3% lower than Q1 2007, but 14.1% higher than the same period in 2006. SPAM in the UK accounts for 61.1% of all email.

The global ratio of email-borne viruses in email traffic from new and previously unknown bad sources, was 1 in 169.2 emails (0.59%) in March, a decrease of 0.36% since the previous month. Virus levels for Q1 2008 are 0.72% higher than for Q4 2007 and 0.06% lower than Q1 2007. Virus levels are 1.47% lower than the same period in 2006.

Phishing was also down slightly by 0.57% between February and March 2008, with one in 228.7 (0.44%) of emails comprising some form of related attack.