The most effective early email-borne viruses didn't need botnets. They didn't change your computer settings, or steal your login credentials. And they somehow convinced regular users to help them spread. The first warnings about the Good Times virus began to appear in November of 1994, and by December the warnings were seen all over as people did what the warning said, and forwarded it to all their friends. There was another outbreak the following March... more
Anti-spam and malware enforcement agency ACMA reports on this (shocking high?) figure. Keep this up and ca. 50% of the Australian population is infected within a year. I remember a presentation from Sweden only a few years ago, that there were only a little over a thousand infected pc's in Sweden. (Reactions were: that can't be correct. Too low) Do you know what the numbers are for your country and maybe more importantly what your government and/or Industry is/are doing about it? more
I'm sure many of you are familiar with the targeted ESP phishing attack that has been ongoing for almost a year now and has led to multiple known ESP system breaches. Return Path was recently a victim of this same attack... In short, a relatively small list of our clients' email addresses was taken from us, meaning those addresses are now the targets of the phishing campaign that are intended to compromise those client systems. more
The European Commission is apparently considering the promulgation and adoption of a directive that would, at least in part, criminalize botnets. As I understand it, the premise behind adopting such a directive is that since botnets are capable of inflicting "harm" on a large scale, we need to separately criminalize them. I decided to examine the need for and utility of such legislation in this post. more
McAfee, Inc. today unveiled its McAfee Threats Report: Third Quarter 2010, which uncovered that average daily malware growth has reached its highest levels, with an average of 60,000 new pieces of malware identified per day, almost quadrupling since 2007. At the same time, spam levels decreased in volume this quarter, both globally and in local geographies. Spam hit a two year low this quarter while malware continued to soar. More than 14 million unique pieces of malware were identified in 2010, one million more than Q3 2009. more
From time to time, we see unenlightened comments about the efficacy of laws in the fight against spam. "Laws won't stop spam" being the most common. No, they won't. What laws do is dissuade some people from undertaking shoddy mailing practices or even outright spam campaigns. Laws don't stop murder, rape and robbery either, but for those un-dissuaded who undertake such heinous crimes, we, as a society, have laws for punitive effect. They pay the price society exacts for their actions. C-28 will attenuate spam in Canada, and help us to fight spam internationally. more
Latest research suggests the world's most popular top-level domain, .COM, is also the riskiest. According to McAfee's fourth annual 'Mapping the Mal Web' report released today, 56% of all risky sites end in .COM! The study, which according to the company analyzed more than 27 million websites, also reports that while .COM is the riskiest top-level domain, the riskiest country domain is Vietnam (.VN). Japan's .JP ranks as the safest country domain for the second year in a row. more
Spam and virus trends in Q3'10 confirm that spammers are still hard at work distributing malicious content in new and creative ways, according to the latest reports. The latest spam and virus trends report is produced by Postini, Google's email security and archiving service that, according to the company, processes more than 3 billion email messages per day and more than 50,000 businesses. more
A recent study released today suggests 53 percent of critical infrastructure providers have experienced what they perceived as politically motivated cyber attacks. According to Symantec's 2010 Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Survey, participants claimed to have experienced such an attack on an average of 10 times in the past five years, incurring an average cost of $850,000 during a period of five years to their businesses. more
Micorsoft has released a 253 page cybersecurity ebook primarily intended for teens but also serves as a useful resource for adults interested in overall understanding of various Internet security topics. more
Garth Bruen writes: A report in LegitScript takes a look at Russian rogue Internet pharmacy hacking US government website. "As rogue Internet pharmacy networks become more sophisticated, even US government websites are at risk. Today, we're taking a look at how a rogue Internet pharmacy linked to a criminal network operating out of Russia and Eastern Europe has hacked into a US government website. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a US foreign aid agency, utilizes a ".gov" top-level domain, which is assigned to the control of the US government. Domain names ending in .gov are typically administered by the General Services Administration." more
A study conducted by the Verizon Business RISK team in cooperation with the United States Secret Service has found that breaches of electronic records in 2009 involved more insider threats, greater use of social engineering and the continued strong involvement of organized criminal groups. more
In a perfect world, consumers recognize authentic emails from fake, update their operating system, browser and anti-virus software, and have a healthy skepticism about the safety of the Internet. The bad guys hate perfect, so we should be working with consumers to stop them. ... Organizations like mine are joining forces to recruit consumers -- who are also your customers and employees -- in the fight against cybercrime. more
M86 Security today released it's bi-annual security report for the first half of 2010, highlighting the evolution of obfuscation through combined attacks. From the report: "This threat trend is the latest to emerge as cybercriminals seek new ways to limit the effectiveness of many proactive security controls. Because existing techniques for 'covering their tracks' are becoming less effective, cybercriminals have begun using combined attacks, which are more complex and difficult to detect. By splitting the malicious code between Adobe ActionScript language - built into Adobe flash - and JavaScript components on the webpage, they limit the effectiveness of many of the the proactive security detection mechanisms in place today." more
I just finished reading Richard Clarke and Robert Knake's book Cyberwar. Though the book has flaws, some of them serious, the authors make some important points. They deserve to be taken seriously. I should note that I disagree with some of my friends about whether or not "cyberwar" is a real concept. Earlier, I speculated that perhaps it might be a useful way to conduct disinformation operations, but it need not be so limited. more
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