The latest Internet Security Threat Report released by Symantec shows that because home users are less likely to have established security measures in place, they are being increasingly targeted by attackers for 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% 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.
“Attackers see end users as the weakest link in the security chain and are constantly targeting them in an effort to profit,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India. “Symantec introduced new metrics to further understand how to better protect customers against these security concerns in years to come,” he adds.
Desktop Attacks on the Rise: 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% of all vulnerabilities documented by Symantec in 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).
Evasive Techniques on the Rise: During this reporting period, 18% 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% over the previous period. At the same time, spam made up 54% of all monitored e-mail traffic, a slight increase from 50% 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 Drives Malicious Activity: 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% 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.
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