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Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. are building up their forces to fight an emerging enemy: "social" spam. One of their foot soldiers is Tao Stein, a Facebook engineer. At 4 a.m. one May morning, Mr. Stein was jolted out of bed by a spam alert on his cellphone. Facebook was being inundated with messages that read, "hey check out this link FREE IPAD." But there was no free iPad—just malware that caused Facebook users who clicked on the link to unintentionally rebroadcast the annoying message to friends. Mr. Stein switched on his coffee pot and logged on to his computer, launching a program to filter out the iPad offers. He adjusted his filter as the spammers quickly modified their come-on to evade it. "We have to continue iterating until we find their Achilles' heel," says Mr. Stein, whose efforts stemmed the tide only for about a day. Spam, one of the Internet's oldest annoyances, is gearing up for a second act. Unlike traditional email spam, which usually comes from strangers, this new form—dubbed "social" spam—often appears to be from a friend. Criminals find social networks alluring because they can spread messages though a chain of trusted sources. Such spam puts the usefulness of social networking at risk. Facebook says less than 4% of the content shared on its site is spam and Twitter says just 1.5% of all tweets were "spammy" in 2010. But Facebook adds that the volume is growing faster than its user base. On any given day, spam hits less than 0.5% of Facebook users
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Dec. 28, 2012 — McAfee today unveiled its 2012 Threat Predictions report, outlining the top threats that McAfee foresees for the coming year. The list indicates that emerging threats from 2011 are on track to become the major players for cyberactivity in 2012, including mobile banking, “legal” spam and virtual currency. McAfee Labs also predicts that attacks involving political motivation or notoriety will also make headlines, including high-profile industrial attacks, cyberwarfare demonstrations and hacktivist attacks targeting public figures. “Many of the threats that will become prominent in 2012 have already been looming under the radar in 2011,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “Over the past year, the general public has become more aware of some of these risks, such as threats to critical infrastructure or the impact of hacktivism as they gain international media attention. In the meantime, we continue to see cybercriminals improving their toolkits and malware and are ready to make a significant impact in 2012.” McAfee Labs Threat Predictions for 2012: Industrial Attacks: Cybercriminals Target Utilities Water, electricity, oil and gas are essential to people’s everyday lives, yet many industrial systems are not prepared for cyberattacks. Many of the environments where SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems are deployed don’t have stringent security practices. As with recent incidents directed at water utilities in the United States, attackers will continue to leverage this lack of preparedness, if only for blackmail or extortion in 2012. Advertisers Will “Legalize” Spam McAfee Labs has seen a drop in global spam volumes in the past two years. However, legitimate advertisers are picking up where the spammers left off, using the same spamming techniques, such as purchasing email lists of users who have “consented” to receive advertising or purchasing customer databases from companies going out of business. McAfee Labs expects to see this “legal” spam and the technique known as “snowshoe spamming” to continue to grow at a faster rate than illegal phishing and confidence scams. Mobile Threats: Attackers will bypass PCs 2011 has seen the largest levels in mobile malware history. In 2012, McAfee Labs expects for mobile attackers to improve on their skill set and move toward mobile banking attacks. Techniques previously dedicated for online banking, such as stealing from victims while they are still logged on while making it appear that transactions are coming from the legitimate user, will now target mobile banking users. McAfee Labs expects attackers will bypass PCs and go straight after mobile banking apps, as more and more users handle their finances on mobile devices. Embedded Hardware: The Promised Land for sophisticated hackers Embedded systems are designed for a specific control function within a larger system and are commonly used in automotive, medical devices, GPS devices, routers, digital cameras and printers. McAfee Labs expects to see proofs-of-concept codes exploiting embedded systems to become more effective in 2012 and beyond. This will require malware that attacks at the hardware layer, and will enable attacks to gain greater control and maintain long-term access to the system and its data. Sophisticated hackers will then have complete control over hardware.
Antivirus research is a cat and mouse problem. Each time the virus writers develop a new technique to spread malware or steal private data, antivirus experts rush to build countermeasures. To actually defeat the malware coders, we need to get out of strictly reactive mode. That requires looking at the motivations that drive malware creators, not just at their actions. [Note: The content of this article was originally presented as the keynote speech for the 6th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software (Malware 2011) this past October in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, Trend Micro, and WSSRL (Wireless System Security Research Laboratory), this conference aims to "bring together experts from industry, academia, and government" to discuss the latest advances in malware research.] Virus Writers of Old – Motivations The concept of a computer virus is probably older than you think. Von Neumann theorized the possibility of self-reproducing automata way back in the sixties. A fictional sentient computer protected itself using a virus in David Gerrold's "When Harlie Was One" (1972). The protagonist of John Brunner's "The Shockware Rider" (1975) erased his identity using a network worm. And in 1996 Jeff Goldblum saved the world by uploading a computer virus into an alien spaceship from… a Macintosh?! Some early virus writers coded their creations just to prove it could be done. These proof-of-concept viruses go way back. Creeper, an experimental self-replicating program, spread across ARPANET in the early 70's. However, it wasn't until 1986 that we saw the first PC virus, called "Brain." F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypponen actually tracked down Brain's creators 25 years later, using the address and phone number embedded in the virus code. Apparently they were experimenting with DOS security and tracking; they had no intention of creating a virus.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina park officials are apologizing for mistakenly serving up a heaping helping of holiday spam. The Charlotte Observer reports (http://bit.ly/tB8Lvy) the state's Parks and Recreation staff sent an electronic seasonal greeting that inadvertently allowed people to reply to all 47,000 people on the agency's email list. Assistant Director Don Reuter says the staff spent this week addressing the concerns of people who worried their individual email addresses or other personal data were compromised. Assistant Director Don Reuter says the staff spent this week addressing the concerns of people who worried their individual email addresses or other personal data were compromised. Reuter says a sender could reach the whole group but did not have access to the list of addresses. Reuter says the division won't send any more group emails unless staffers are sure they can't generate mass replies.
DUBAI: More than 50 per cent of all spam messages in the world during the third quarter of 2011 originated from just six countries, with India accounting for the highest 14.8 per cent of such messages. According to Kaspersky Lab's spam report, India was ahead of countries like Indonesia (10.6 per cent), Brazil (9.65 per cent), Peru (6.65 per cent), South Korea (5.85 per cent) and Ukraine (3.7 per cent). All of the countries that make up the top 10 sources of spam are situated in South America, Asia and Eastern Europe, the report said. "This is due to the fact that there are numerous users in these countries and they are, for the most part, not very experienced when it comes to IT security. This makes them a soft target for cybercriminals spreading spam-bots," it said. The report said that all GCC countries together accounted for only 1.33 per cent of all global spam, with Saudi Arabia leading the pack. This was attributed to the low number of users and more vigilance in protecting computers in these countries. GCC countries are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
Targeted attacks towards mobile devices and centers of industry are high on the list of priorities for hackers, according to McAfee’s 2012 Threat Predictions report, published today. In 2011, most of the hacking breaches were targeted towards financial centers and governmental offices as well as global corporations. While some of these attacks have trickled down to affect customers of these agencies, many of whom can be considered innocent bystanders, things are about to get a whole lot more serious for ordinary citizens next year, according to McAfee. Specifically, many utility systems (i.e. water, electricity, oil and gas) don’t have stringent security practices. McAfee predicts that cyber criminals will take advantage of this gap in 2012, possibly with blackmail or extortion included. McAfee’s predictions fall in line with Cisco’s 2012 predictions, which has repeatedly issued reports attesting that most cyber criminals are dropping producing mass spam in favor of more targeted attacks. McAfee Labs senior vice president Vincent Weafer concurred in the report that many of the budding threats in 2011 will become more prominent in 2012: Over the past year, the general public has become more aware of some of these risks, such as threats to critical infrastructure or the impact of hacktivism as they gain international media attention. In the meantime we continue to see cybercriminals improving their toolkits and malware and are ready to make a significant impact in 2012. Other major threat predictions include new hacktivist groups, spam exploiting virtual currency and digital wallets, the circulation of fake rogue certificates, and even cyber attacks against critical infrastructure between military and government organizations worldwide.
As expected, malicious spam taking advantage of the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has been hitting inboxes since the news was announced. The emails contain a simple line of text announcing the death, likely copied and pasted from the CNN website, and carries an attachment named brief_introduction_of_kim-jong-il.pdf.pdf. Once downloaded and executed, the malicious file opens a non-malicious PDF file containing a picture and information about the deceased man in order to hide its true activity on the victims' computer. In other variants of the same theme, the attached file is named Kim_Jong_il_s_death_affects_N._Korea_s_nuclear_programs.doc and, once opened, it drops backdoor-opening malware into the system, which then connects to a remote C&C;server for further instructions.
A smartphone security company has predicted that in 2012, there will be more malware masquerading as legit apps, apps that will fleece consumer pockets and malvertising — real-looking ads that lead trusting souls to fraudulent sites. Lookout Mobile Security, which monitors apps on Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Mobile devices, released its "Malwarenomics: 2012 Mobile Malware Predictions" report Tuesday night, which follows up on information gathered this year that revealed more than 1,000 instances of infected applications, doubling in frequency since July. The report also found that for U.S. Android users, the likelihood of clicking on an unsafe link is 40 percent. Not that it's surprising, but money seems the most significant motivation behind the most egregious mobile malware Lookout studied: When mobile malware producers are able to steadily increase profits from infections more than they pay to infect devices, the industry will grow rapidly. There are a number of trends seen in 2011 that we expect to carry over into 2012 (perhaps at a greater rate) that will drive down the cost of infection and drive up profitability. The company identified some specific instances where consumers "should use extra caution when downloading apps or clicking links" on phones.
The rate of spam across the world has hit close to a three-year low and now encompasses just 70 percent of all e-mails, according to Symantec's November Intelligence Report (PDF). That number is a healthy drop from 2009 when spam accounted for 90 percent of all global e-mails. And it's close to the 68 percent level seen in late 2008 after the spam hosting ISP McColo was shut down. In particular, pharmaceutical spam is at its lowest level since Symantec started tracking it, now accounting for 32.5 percent of all spam, cut in half from 64.2 percent a year ago. Russia proved to be the most spammed region last month, with a rate of 76.7 percent, followed by Saudi Arabia with 76.6 percent of its e-mails blocked as spam. The U.S. fared a little better where 69.9 percent of all e-mails were identified as junk. Of course, spammers always find a way to bounce back, so the sharp decline in junk mail has been slowing as of late, says Symantec. Plus, the bad guys are using more targeted malware approaches instead of blanketing the world with mass e-mails. Directed toward specific people or organizations, such targeted attacks often use social media to trick their victims into installing malware geared toward stealing company secrets.
Spearphishing attacks have tripled and scams and malware campaigns have increased by a factor of four in the last 12 months, resulting in $1.29 billion in financial losses, remediation and lost business, according to a report from Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) released Thursday. These and other findings were incorporated in “Email Attacks: This Time It’s Personal,” a report which researchers at Cisco Security Intelligence Operations compiled from surveying 361 IT professionals from 50 organizations in an effort to examine attack trends and their financial impact on organizations. Above all, Cisco researchers said that cyber criminals are overwhelmingly trending toward low-volume but highly sophisticated spearphishing and targeted attacks, evidenced by a spate of recent cyber assaults against RSA , Google , Lockheed Martin and Sony. “2011 has been the year of the breaches,” said Patrick Peterson, a Cisco security research fellow, during a Cisco press event Thursday. Peterson added that what differentiated the security landscape now is the number of high-profile, targeted attacks. “They’re so in your face and take such a front-page level, for various reasons. They have been on the front page and will continue to be on the front page,” he said.
