Malware authors target Mac emerging markets
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Following the money Cybercrooks are looking beyond PCs running Microsoft as targets for attack, with Macs increasingly in the firing line of hacker activity.â¦
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The CanSecWest security research conference promoters are thinking about giving hackers another shot at cracking the Mac. Only this time, they're looking to broaden the field.
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Malicious PDF files being sent out in e-mails in an effort to infect users' computers are the work of the notorious Russian Business Network, according to security researcher Ken Dunham.
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In 2007 hackers found a new target, Mac OS X.
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(InfoWorld) - Financially motivatedÂ malwareÂ attacks areÂ on the rise,Â with automated software packages making it easy for unskilled hackers to earn a living by sending out spam, researchers at messaging security vendor Secure Computing say. A malware kit calledÂ MPack,Â released by Russian hackers last December, allows pretty much anyone with $200 to become a master spammer because it is easy to use and exploits vulnerabilities in FireFox, Internet Explorer and Apple's QuickTime, says Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist for Secure Computing. The trend that "kind of defines 2007" is the convergence of traditional e-mail with Web-based attacks, in which message recipients are prompted to click on links to malicious Web sites, rather than to download attachments, Alperovitch says. "Certainly, exploiting Web browser vulnerabilities has been common. We've seen that for a long time," he says. "Now we're seeing that capability being merged with traditional e-mail worms that sort of blanket the Internet." Information-stealing malware now accounts for 10 percent of all threats, up from 8 percent in January, new research from Secure Computing has found. Trojans comprise 63 percent of all newly discoveredÂ malware, up from 58 percent in January. SpywareÂ and phishing are also becoming more problematic as attackers use more targeted attacks to steal personal and financial information. "The barriers to entry into cyber crime have been lowered so much," Alperovitch says. "People are realizing that they can make very serious money with almost no accountability, almost complete anonymity." Quoting the analyst firm Gartner, Secure Computing's researchers say that 75 percent of enterprises will be infected by "undetectable professional-grade malware" by year-end. About 90 percent of all e-mail is malicious, but that figure will rise as the holiday season gets closer, according to Alperovitch. "There's a good chance we'll reach 95 percent, maybe higher, of all e-mails being malicious by the end of the year," he says. As the storm worm showed, the automation of online attacks is allowing the creation of more botnets, he says. E-mail delivery mechanisms are also being optimized to bypass spam filters. Unfortunately, many Web surfers are far too trusting. "If you're walking down the street and someone asks you for your Social Security number or your bank account pin, you're not going to give it to them," Alperovitch says. "Yet on the Internet, people freely give them out to anyone who sends them an e-mail message." Here are some key security trends and events identified by Secure Computing in the first eight months of 2007: -- TheÂ Storm worm,Â named after subject lines like "230 dead as storm batters Europe," and similar worms became widespread in January and the following months, with new variants being created every 15 minutes. -- A password-stealingÂ Trojan hit visitors to the Miami Dolphins' stadium Web siteÂ during the Super Bowl, when attackers took advantage of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer's rendering of vector markup language documents. -- A mass-email with pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in April lured people to a Web site that hosted a zero-day exploit related to Windows' handling of animated cursor files. Microsoft released a patch to fix the vulnerability. -- More than 10,000 European Web sites hosted malware attacks in June after being compromised. "Hidden IFRAME's" were injected into the Web sites, referring visitors to malicious sites using MPack to deliver banking Trojans. -- So-called backdoor Trojans affect home users around the world, including nearly 100,000 PCs now infected by a new wave of storm malware. "The mailings that came with subject lines such as 'You've received a postcard from a family member!' directed users to Web-hosted exploits for several different vulnerabilities; they infect users' computers and attach them to the Storm family's P2P botnet," Secure Computing writes. Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Feeding on fat cats A researcher has uncovered malware that targets commercial bank customers by logging into their online accounts and wiring large sums to accounts under the control of criminals.â¦
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IMlogic, a Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm, has partnered with McAfee, Sybari and AOL to establish an instant message and P2P threat center that will detect the spread of viruses, worms and other malware aimed at these online channels.
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Russia may soon prosecute the authors of the &quot;Pinch&quot; Trojan, an easy-to-use malicious software program available on the Internet that steals a variety of data.Nikolay Patrushev, who heads Russia&#39;s Federal Security Services, said earlier this week that Pinch&#39;s authors had been identified and would be taken to court, according to a blog posting by Russian security vendor Kaspersky Lab.Kaspersky said the arrest of the Pinch writers, identified as Ermishkin and Farkhutdinov, would be on the same level as the 2005 prosecution of German Sven Jaschan for creating the NetSky and Sasser worms, which caused thousands of infected computers to crash worldwide.With Pinch, &quot;it&#39;s impossible to estimate what financial losses have been caused over the years since this Trojan first saw the light of day,&quot; Kaspersky said.Pinch&#39;s sellers would customize the program for buyers and offer support, illustrating a growing underground economy for hacking tools, Kaspersky said.Thousands of versions of Pinch, which comes in Russian and English language versions, are still circulating on the Internet. Kaspersky said its security software can detect some 4,000 variants of Pinch, where the basic code is the same but aspects of the program have been modified in order to evade detection by security software.Pinch has a highly developed user interface that can be used for sorting information it steals off other computers, according to F-Secure.It can steal e-mail account passwords, pilfer other password information stored in the Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers, and snap screenshots.That stolen information can also be encrypted before it is sent back to the hacker, according to Panda Security, another security vendor.Pinch could also be customized to have the victimized computer join a botnet, or a network of computers set up to hide other malicious activity by the hacker. Botnets are often used to send spam or mount other hacking attacks.
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Security guru calls for integrity Malware protection needs to be built into operating systems rather than bolted on as an afterthought if the industry stands any chance of dealing with the evolving threat of targeted attacks, according to a senior security researcher.â¦
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By Shyla Sangaran  THE rising use of networks of compromised machines, or botnets, to send out spam is becoming a major security headache for enterprises across the globe, including Malaysia.
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The number of malware code samples in the wild grew 30 percent to 410,000 in 2007, according to security researchers at IBM's ISS division. The Storm worm in particular accounted for 13 percent of the entire malware collection.IBM released these findings and more in its security trends report for 2007, which summarizes the threat landscape based on IBM's research on malware, software vulnerabilities, phishing, and Web sites with questionable content.While software vulnerabilities decreased 5.4 percent last year to 6,437 disclosures by vendors, the most risky "high impact" vulnerabilities that allow immediate remote or local access increased from 16.2 percent in 2006, the first such increase noted since 2004.Kris Lamb, operations manager at X-Force Research and Development at IBM ISS, says one thing that struck him about this year's threat analysis is that half of the software vulnerabilities reported by vendors in 2007 had no vendor patch available for them."It seems that vendors have not produced patches, and we don't know why," Lamb says.Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, and Cisco, together accounted for 13.6 percent of the total number of vulnerabilities -- and left 20 percent of those vulnerabilities unpatched, the report points out.On the spam front, average spam message size is down to pre-2005 levels, corresponding with a decrease in image-based spam, the 2007 IBM ISS report says.The report also notes that 9 percent of Internet content can be classified as unwanted criminal, pornographic, or "socially deviant" as compared with 12.5 percent last year. Socially deviant content is said to include political extremism, hate sites, and groups advocating discrimination. The United States far outpaces other countries as the primary hosting source of this unwanted content, accounting for roughly 40 percent to 48 percent in each category.In its malware-code analysis, IBM ISS says there's a shift from mass-mailing worms to sophisticated targeted Trojan attacks with rootkits and other blended threats. Trojans made up the single largest class of malware in 2007, accounting for 26 percent of the total. But IBM ISS believes that malware code is becoming less distinct as simply a virus, worm, spyware, backdoor, or password stealer."Modern malware is now the digital equivalent of the Swiss Army knife, and 2007 data continues to support this," the report concludes.
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While corporations are monitoring ports and using advanced security tools to fend off infection and attack, home users -- who have less technical sophistication -- are left more susceptible, sometimes
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A new virus targeting Mac OS X is not expected to cause much trouble. But malcode experts said it should serve as a warning to those using alternatives to Microsoft that their machines are not attack-proof.
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Researchers see a rise in malware that sends spam recipients to DNS servers controlled by phishers.
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From Russia without love Security watchers have discovered a string of malicious websites that install Trojan code, allowing hackers to compromise end-user banking credentials for more than 50 financial institutions and ecommerce websites.â¦
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Security researcher issues a warning that a rogue software application targeting the Mac has surfaced.
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One of the first pieces of malicious code targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system has been discovered.