Malware grew by 100 percent during 2007: F-Secure report

DQC News Bureau

Bangalore: In its 2007 data security summary, F-Secure reports of a steep
increase in the amount of new malware detected during 2007. In fact the amount
of cumulative malware detections doubled during the year, reaching the amount of
half a million.

"We've never seen as many samples arrive to our labs", says Mikko
Hypponen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure Corporation. "We would be
unable to handle such huge samples loads if we would not have built a high
degree of automation into our malware analysis systems over the past
years", he continues. While no truly new malware technologies were seen the
existing ones were refined and adapted for much greater effectiveness.

One example of a refined technology was the "Storm Worm" botnet. The
successful social engineering methods the Storm gang used during the first half
of 2007 were further developed in the second half of the year.

Understandably financial transactions remain a favorite target for network
crime. The amount of phishing sites continues to increase, but as bank customers
have become more aware of this threat the criminals have started employing more
sophisticated techniques. One example of this is banking trojans that use
methods such as injecting themselves directly into the browser application
(Man-in-the-Browser attacks).

Other increasing data security phenomena during 2007 included parasitic
behavior, like the Zlob DNSChanger, and increasing security exploit activity for
Apple products, including both Mac's, iTunes and the iPhone. Also the
vulnerability of large databases containing personal data has become an issue
with several major leaks reported during the year including tens of millions of
e.g. credit card numbers or bank account information. Such leaks enable so
called "spear phishing" attacks with very well targeted information. The
increased popularity of social networking services carries similar risks.

On the mobile security front Symbian S60 as the most popular smartphone
platform has done a good job of curbing malware with its 3rd edition software.
Nevertheless, there are \ spy-tools for the Symbian S60 3rd edition platform.
Despite the fairly tightly controlled Symbian signing process for applications,
spy-tools are able to get through the process by being submitted as "back-up"
software. Also the increasing popularity of "unlocking" the security
controls of both iPhone and Symbian phones is introducing increased risks for
the unlocked phones.