Malicious activities taking root in emerging countries
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 20 April 2010, 18:55 IST   |    1 Comments
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California: Malicious activities are now taking root in countries with an emerging broadband infrastructure, reveals the report of a software security firm. Internet Security Threat Report by Symantec saw solid signs that malicious activity is now taking root in countries like Brazil, India, Poland, Vietnam and Russia. In 2009, these countries moved up the rankings as a source and target of malicious activity by cyber criminals. The findings from the report suggest that government crackdowns in developed countries have led cyber criminals to launch their attacks from the developing world, where they are less likely to be prosecuted. According to the report, the cyber criminals are using social networking sites to synthesize socially engineered attacks on key individuals within targeted companies. The report also reveals that the accessibility of Cyber crime attack toolkits have lowered the bar to entry for new cyber criminals. These kits are making it easy for unskilled attackers to compromise computers and steal information. One such toolkit called Zeus (Zbot), can be purchased at $700, automates the process of creating customized malware capable of stealing personal information. Using kits like Zeus, attackers created literally millions of new malicious code variants in an effort to evade detection by security software. The year 2009 saw dramatic growth in the number of Web-based attacks targeted at PDF viewers and this accounted for 49 percent of observed Web-based attacks. This is a sizeable increase from the 11 percent reported in 2008. Symantec identified more than 240 million distinct new malicious programs, a 100 percent increase over 2008. Most of the enterprises surveyed (75 percent) some form of cyber attack in 2009. In 2009, spam made up 88 percent of all e-mail observed by Symantec, with a high of 90.4 percent in May and a low of 73.7 percent in February. Of the 107 billion spam messages distributed globally per day on average, 85 percent were from botnets. The report also found that maintaining a secure, patched system became more challenging than ever in 2009. Moreover, many users are failing to patch even very old vulnerabilities. "Attackers have evolved from simple scams to highly sophisticated espionage campaigns targeting some of the world's largest corporations and government entities," said Stephen Trilling, Senior Vice President, Security Technology and Response, Symantec. "The scale of these attacks and the fact that they originate from across the world, makes this a truly international problem requiring the cooperation of both the private sector and world governments," he said.

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