Security threats cross technology borders towards a new
malicious economy; social engineering, bank scams, Cyber War and
clever mobile intruders
The F-Secure Lab saw a steady flow of reports on a vast variety
of data security threats during the first half of 2007. The
underlying trend to note is the spread of malicious activity across
various forms of technology and applications during the 6-month
period. It would appear that the parties behind orchestrating
security attacks are conquering more and more foothold to build a
stronger, sustainable commercial economy based on carefully crafted
security attacks targeting consumers, companies and public sector
organizations.
Social engineering developed to a new level of sophistication
via the Small.DAM Trojan, causing havoc via e-mail in January,
2007. Masking itself under the pretense of shocking headline news,
linked to real-life events such as the January storms in Europe,
the Storm-Worm spread at an alarming speed across the globe in just
one night. The F-Secure tracking System was illuminated across the
continents as the Trojan took its course
http://www.f-secure.com/2007/images/stormworm.wmv
The banking industry continued to be a key target for
phishing scams. As Trojans become more technically complex,
scammers implemented new techniques in their attacks, including
content filters that keep closer track of consumers’ online banking
activity. Such detection methods make it easier and more effective
for fraudsters to collect more account details using a variety of
methods. However, an industry discussion is gathering pace around a
potential solution to banking scams. We believe that top-level
domains inaccessible to scammers, such as .bank, could put a stop
to some of the most alarming phishing activity. Read more on the
topic at
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-052007.html#00001184
The link between cybercrime and real-life political unrest was
tightened as a form of 'Cyber War' emerged as political rioting
caused general unrest in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. Disputes
over the re-location of a Russian Red Army monument not only led to
arrests over ground, but several governmental and other public
sector and media websites were heavily targeted via Distributed
Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks by an extremely active network of
hackers. Several key sites were rendered unreachable.
Adding to the construction of a stronger malicious economy of
sophisticated security breaches, the mobile malware industry became
more active during the last 6 months. 'Personalised' SMS spam,
financial lotteries, and Viver trojans masking themselves as
utility programs are some of the examples of the fast-developing
mobile scams. New spyware was also reported for some Windows Mobile
and Symbian S60 3rd Edition devices.
It is fairly alarming to see increasingly complex mobile trojans
and spyware being developed by growing commercial entities, making
solid profits to support further development of the malicious
economy.
***
For more information about these and other stories, please
consult the "F-Secure 2007 Data Security Summary for H1, 2007". In
addition of being available for download as a PDF file, F-Secure
has also prepared a video and audio Podcast versions of the
summary, featuring Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen.
Please see
http://www.f-secure.com/2007/ for more.
About F-Secure Corporation
F-Secure Corporation protects consumers and businesses against
computer viruses and other threats from the Internet and mobile
networks. We want to be the most reliable provider of security
services in the market. One way to demonstrate this is the speed of
our response. According to independent studies in 2004, 2005 and
2006 our response time to new threats is significantly faster than
our major competitors. Our award-winning solutions are available
for workstations, gateways, servers and mobile phones. They include
antivirus and desktop firewall with intrusion prevention, antispam
and antispyware solutions, as well as network control solutions for
Internet Service Providers. Founded in 1988, F-Secure has been
listed on the Helsinki Exchanges since 1999, and has been
consistently growing faster than all its publicly listed
competitors. F-Secure headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland, and we
have regional offices around the world. F-Secure protection is also
available as a service through major ISPs, such as France Telecom,
TeliaSonera, PCCW and Charter Communications. F-Secure is the
global market leader in mobile phone protection provided through
mobile operators, such as T-Mobile and Swisscom and mobile handset
manufacturers such as Nokia. The latest real-time virus threat
scenario news are available at the F-Secure Data Security Lab
weblog at
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
For more information, please contact:
Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer
Tel. +358 40 064 8180
Email:
firstname.lastname@f-secure.com
