IMLogic, an instant messaging security firm, on Monday said that attacks on IM networks increased to record levels, multiplying by fourteen times through the first three quarters of this year.

“Over the past three months the nature of the IM threat has continued to evolve with increasing levels of sophistication and rates of infection demonstrated by IM worms and viruses,” IMlogic CTO Jon Sakoda said.

MSN Messenger users are the number one target of the attack, sharing 62% of reported incidents. 31% goes to AIM client, and the rest, 7%, targets Yahoo! Messenger users. Among all of the attack, 87% were worm-based, 12% hijacked file transfer to deliver viruses, and 1% utilized system vulnerabilities. Altogether, 713 different threats have been reported for IM and P2P applications.

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