by Playfuls Staff |
25th September 2006
The latest Internet Security Threat Report released Symantec
shows that because home users are less likely to have established security
measures in place, they are being increasingly targeted by attackers for [more]
identity theft, fraud, or other financially motivated crime. Furthermore,
attackers are now using a variety of techniques to escape detection and prolong
their presence on systems in order to gain more time to steal information,
hijack the computer for marketing purposes, provide remote access, or otherwise
compromise confidential information for profit.
Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report notes that home
users are the most targeted attack sector, accounting for 86 percent of all targeted
attacks, followed by financial services businesses. Symantec has identified
increased attacks aimed at client-side applications, increased use of evasive
tactics to avoid detection, and that large, widespread Internet worms have
given way to smaller, more targeted attacks focusing on fraud, data theft, and
criminal activity.
As software vendors and enterprises successfully adapt to
the changing threat environment by implementing security best practices and
defense-in-depth strategies, attackers have begun to adopt new techniques such
as targeting malicious code at client-side applications including Web browsers,
e-mail clients, and other desktop applications. Vulnerabilities affecting Web
applications accounted for 69 percent of all vulnerabilities documented by
Symantec in the first half of 2006. Vulnerabilities in Web browsers have also
become increasingly prominent, with 47 vulnerabilities documented in Mozilla
browsers (compared to 17 in the last reporting period), 38 in Microsoft
Internet Explorer (compared to 25), and 12 in Apple Safari (compared to six).
During this reporting period, 18 percent of all distinct
malicious code samples detected by Symantec had not been seen before,
indicating that attackers are more actively attempting to evade detection by
signature-based antivirus and intrusion detection/prevention systems.
Phishers are also attempting to bypass filtering
technologies by creating multiple randomized messages and distributing those
messages in a broad uncontrolled fashion. During the first six months of 2006,
157,477 unique phishing messages were detected, marking an increase of 81
percent over the previous period. At the same time, spam made up 54 percent of
all monitored e-mail traffic, a slight increase from 50 percent the previous
period. Most spammers are opting to exclude malicious code with their spam to
decrease the chances of being blocked and instead include links to Web sites
hosting malicious code.
Financial gain remains the motivation behind many of the
threats during the reporting period. For example, bot networks can be used not
only to spread malicious code, but to send spam or phishing messages, download
adware and spyware, attack an organization, and harvest confidential
information. Symantec identified more than 4.6 million distinct, active bot
network computers and observed an average of 57,717 active bot network
computers per day during this period. Bot networks are also commonly used in
denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, a major threat to organizations as these
attacks can result in disrupted communication, loss of revenue, damage to brand
and reputation, and exposure to criminal extortion schemes. During the first
half of 2006, Symantec observed an average of 6,110 DoS attacks per day.
Other financially motivated attacks use modular malicious
code, malware that updates itself or downloads a more aggressive threat upon
establishing a foothold on the victim host, to expose sensitive information.
During the first half of 2006, modular malicious code accounted for 79 percent
of the top 50 malicious code reported to Symantec. Additionally, malicious code
threats that expose confidential data represented 30 of the top 50 samples
submitted to Symantec.
For the first time, Symantec tracked the sectors of brands
being targeted by phishing attacks – another means to monetary gain. Not
surprisingly, the financial services sector was the most heavily phished,
accounting for 84 percent of phishing sites tracked by the Symantec Phish
Report Network and Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam this period.
Also, Symantec documented 2,249 new vulnerabilities in the
first half of 2006, an increase of 18 percent over the previous period and the
highest volume of vulnerabilities recorded for any reporting period.
The window of exposure for enterprise vendors and Web
browsers was 28 days, down from 50 days in the previous period. Microsoft
Internet Explorer had an average window of exposure of nine days (down from
25), Apple Safari at five days (up from zero), Opera at two days (down from
18), and Mozilla at one day (up from negative two). For the first time,
Symantec tracked the average time it takes operating system vendors to release
a patch for a vulnerability. Sun had the longest patch release time with 89
days followed by HP with 53 days. Apple took an average of 37 days while
Microsoft and Red Hat had the lowest average patch release times with 13 days.
Misleading Applications: Three of the top 10 new security risks were misleading
applications that give false or exaggerated reports of security threats on a
user’s system in order to persuade the user to pay money to upgrade to another
version of the software that will “remove the threats” that were found.
The United
States was the location of the most denial
of service (DoS) targets, accounting for 54 percent of the worldwide total, and
the Internet service provider (ISP) sector was the sector most targeted by DoS
attacks. The United States
also had the highest percentage of bot command-and-control servers, with 42
percent of the total, while China
had the highest number of bot-infected computers, with 20 percent of the
worldwide total.
Among the trends Symantec expects to see in the future are
a resurgence of polymorphism and other evasion techniques in Win32 malicious
code; an increase in threats which exploit “Web 2.0” concepts such as
user-based publishing and technologies like AJAX; security concerns associated
with the release of Windows Vista; and an increase in the number of
vulnerabilities reported due to the use of fuzzers which are programs or
scripts designed to find vulnerabilities in software code.
