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Brief
Security threats loom large says Symantec
Symantec’s latest report divulges fortune and not fame
as the motivation behind cyber attacks
The twelfth edition of the Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) released
by Symantec Corporation reveals a shift in the pattern and method of attack
launched by hackers. According to the report, cyber criminals are now employing
business-like strategies clearly defining fortune and not fame as their motivation.
In addition, they are now targeting tier-II cities such as Bhopal, Hyderabad,
Noida, Pune and Surat.
The report also states that cyber-criminals are increasingly becoming more professional
with focused commercial intent in the development, distribution and use of malicious
code and services. It highlights an increase in the incidents of cyber-criminals
leveraging sophisticated toolkits like Mpack to carry out malicious attacks.
The ISTR covers the reporting period of January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2007.
“The Internet threats and malicious activity that we are currently tracking
demonstrate that hackers are taking this trend to the next level by making cybercrime
their profession, and that they are now employing business-like practices to
accomplish this goal,” said Prabhat Kumar Singh, Director, Security Response
Lab, Symantec India.
It also brought out the fact that SMBs in India are increasingly targeted by
phishing, spam, bots, and malicious code (malcode) attacks. This is being primarily
done to extract information from these organizations that can be used for financial
gain. These businesses also featured in the list of victims of data theft and
data leakage due to lack of multiple layers of security.
| Credit cards were the most commonly advertised commodity
on underground economy servers, making up 22% of all advertisements; bank
accounts came in a close second with 21%.
The report observed 237 vulnerabilities in Web
browser plug-ins, a significant increase over 74 in the second half of
2006, and 34 in the first half of 2006.
Malicious code that attempted to steal account
information for online games made up 5% of the top 50 malicious code samples
by potential infection.
Online gaming is becoming one of the most popular Internet
activities and often features goods that can be purchased for real money,
which provides a potential opportunity for attackers to benefit financially.
Spam made up 61% of all monitored e-mail traffic, representing
a slight increase over the last six months of 2006 when 59% of e-mail
was classified as spam.
Theft or loss of computer or other data-storage medium
made up 46% of all data breaches that could lead to identity theft.
58% of enterprises expect a major data loss at least
once every 5 years.
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India-specific findings
India has over 40 command-and control servers, and has approximately 38,465
distinct bot-infected computers. There were approximately 374 new bots reported
per day during the surveyed period. As per the report, Mumbai tops the list
of bot-infected cities with 33%, followed by New Delhi at 25%, Chennai with
17% and Bangalore at 13%. Tier-II cities also featured on the list with 1% apiece.
The report also revealed the emergence of new malcodes such as the ‘Whybo’
worm (downloads and executes other files), and the ‘Redlofwen’ worm
(disables security applications). Other viruses like ‘Kakavex’ were
used for stealing credit card information while ‘Pandex’, a Trojan,
was deployed for gathering e-mail addresses. It also states that 74% of all
monitored e-mail traffic in India was spam with 2% of spam from EMEA originating
in India and 6% of spam zombies targeting the region being located in India.
The percentage of ‘worms’ as malicious code was 57% in India, higher
than the global average of 31%. A similar increase was observed for viruses,
where India, at 21%, was higher than the global average of 4%. “There are
more than 30 million Internet users across tier I & II cities in India.
Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting the Banking and Financial sector,
Telecom, Information Technology [IT] and Information Technology Enabled Services
[ITeS] sectors,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India.
The report also observed that among the top ten malicious code propagation vectors,
file sharing / executables accounted for a staggering 53% which is the highest
propagation vector in India. This was much higher compared to the worldwide
figure of 22%. Also 46% of data breaches are caused on account of data theft
or data loss.
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