Virus writers are teaming up with spammers to generate more sophisticated email attacks, research shows.

The MessageLabs Intelligence Email Security report shows that 63.5 per cent of all email sent in the first half of 2004 was spam.

Furthermore, 8.3 per cent, or one in 12 emails sent, contained a virus, according to the report.

MessageLabs, which specialises in managed email security services, says virus writers are getting increasingly friendly with spammers and generating more devastating email attacks.

?The boundaries between viruses and spam have been eroded, and commercial gain would seem to be the driving force,? said Paul Wood, chief information security analyst at MessageLabs.

?The script kiddies that used to be content with causing chaos and enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame have realised spam?s potential earning power. They are using their virus writing capabilities to hijack computers and create networks of zombie machines that send millions of spam emails,? he said.

The report also highlighted a huge increase in the number of potential phishing attacks.

MessageLabs says it intercepted just 14 phishing messages in August last year, but that figure has increased enormously to an average of 250,000 a month.

In a separate report, messaging security firm CipherTrust has found that most spam ? 85.9 per cent ? is hailing from the US.

Spammers are using computers around the world to launch spam attacks, with just 28 per cent of the total number of computers that sent spam in May, being located in the US.

The report also shows that just 0.21 per cent of global spam is generated in the UK.

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