Tightening the Net on Cybercrime
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As high-tech thieves loot cash machines around the country, the FBI's man inside gets close to the Russian kingpin behind the crime wave. Second of a three-part series by Kim Zetter.Plus: I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI
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The government calls it &quot;Operation Web Snare&quot;, catching criminals who do business online. They&#39;ve been working since June and today announced dozens of arrests for crimes that cost victims millions of dollars.
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It's war out there and the good guys ain't winning Cybercriminals are stepping up their efforts to exploit vulnerabilities in web browsers to spread malware using drive-by download techniques.â¦
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As the world shrinks, international cybercrime is growing in scope and sophistication.
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According to a new report by the Computer Security Institute (CSI), online security research is being hampered by laws that could land researchers in prison for looking for Web site vulnerabilities, much less disclosing them publicly.
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Targeted spyware, network break-ins, and other digital crime pushes cyber espionage to a new level of concern.
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Legislation such as the CAN SPAM Act as well as improved international cooperation in pursuit of cybercriminals is paying off, according to an FBI expert who spoke Monday at Chicago's Security Standard conference.
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A NEW level of cyber-crime potential looms ahead as increasingly sophisticated attackers aim to steal intellectual property, personal identities and the contents of bank accounts across international borders, and within organisations and social networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Though Internet-crippling virus attacks now seem to be a thing of the past, PC users didn't feel a lot more secure in 2006. That's because online attacks have become more sneaky and professional, as a new breed of financially motivated cybercriminals has emerged as enemy No. 1. MicrosoftÂ patched more bugs than ever and whole new classes of flaws were discovered in kernel-level drivers, office suites, and on widely used Web sites. Vendors' chatter about security is at an all-time high, but the bad guys are still finding lots of places to attack. And, oh yes, spam is back. Following are five of the top computer security stories in 2006. Cybercrime dividends Hackers teamed withÂ professional criminal gangsÂ in increasingly sophisticated computer crime operations aimed purely for profit. Much of the trouble centered on phishing, a type of attack where fake Web pages are constructed to harvest log-in details, credit card numbers, or other personal information. Credit card numbers are often sold online to others for illicit gain. In May, 20,000Â phishing complaintsÂ were reported, a 34 percent increase over the previous year, according to U.S. Department of Justice report. The U.S. hosts the largest percentage of phishing sites, it said. But law enforcement agencies are getting more organized and cooperating better, particularly in international investigations. At least 45 countries participate in the G8 24/7 High Tech Crime Network, which requires nations to have a contact available 24 hours a day to aid in quickly securing electronic evidence for trans-border cybercrime investigations. The private sector has also helped. Microsoft filed dozens of civil suits and gave information to law enforcement for criminal cases in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States against alleged phishers throughout 2006. It's a brand new 0day With automatic software updates now the norm, hackers have been forced to look a little harder for ways to put their malicious software on unsuspecting victims' PCs. In 2006 they turned to zero-day attacks as never before. These attacks take advantage of previously unreported flaws in software, and in 2006 they became a top concern, according to the SANS Institute. In fact, hackers kicked off the new year in 2006 by releasing zero-day attack code based on a flaw in the way Internet Explorer handled WMF (Windows Meta File) documents. This was followed, later in the year, by a rash of very targeted online attacks that exploited unpatched flaws in Microsoft's Office software. In fact, MicrosoftÂ warned of the latest such attackÂ -- this one targeting a flaw in Word -- just this Tuesday. To underline the scope of the zero-day problem, security researchers launched widely publicized "Month of Kernel Bugs" and "Month of Browser Bugs" projects, during which they exposed a new, unpatched vulnerability in browsers and operating systems every day for a month. Spam avalanche Microsoft's Chief Software Architect Bill Gates predicted two years ago that spam would be gone by 2006. He should check his in-box. Rising volumes of junk mailÂ nagged IT administrators throughout 2006. Up to 90 percent of all e-mail was spam, depending on the vendor recording the statistics. Spammers found creative ways to circumvent security software. Image-based spam, where individual messages appear to be unique by subtracting or adding pixels, foiled some security techniques. Spammers also put messages in the images themselves, a tougher challenge to stop since it requires processor-intensive optical character recognition (OCR) techniques. Spam remained the delivery vehicle for other malicious software such as keystroke loggers and rootkits in addition to promoting links to phishing sites, which often aim to steal financial data or log-in credentials. Web 2.0 gets Hacked 1.0 MySpace.com may be a poster child for Web 2.0, but from a security perspective, it hasn't been looking so pretty. That's because the popularÂ social networking site was hit hardÂ this week by a password-stealing worm that exploited a scripting vulnerability on the Web site. And this was not even the first worm to hit MySpace. In October another more benign worm, called Samy, automatically added a Los Angeles teenager's name to visitors profiles, quickly making him appear to be the most popular member of the MySpace community. Security experts say that the kind of cross-site scripting attack used in the recent MySpace worm has become much more prevalent in the past year, as hackers have discovered just how much can be done with these attacks. These bugs can be used to do far more harm than many people realize, security experts say, including forcing PCs to download illegal content, hack other Web sites or send e-mail. Vista lockout irks vendors MicrosoftÂ rankled security vendorsÂ by saying it wouldn't allow their software to access the kernel of the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Patch Guard, Microsoft's kernel security technology, blocks access to prevent unauthorized modifications by malicious software. Vendors, led by Symantec andÂ McAfee, arguedÂ they needed access to the kernel to detect malicious software such as rootkits, which burrow deep into the OS. After a flurry of public statements and pressure from the European Commission, Microsoft agreed to make APIs (application programming interfaces) available. The APIs will allow host intrusion prevention technologies used by vendors to function without hooking the kernel. But Microsoft said the APIs wouldn't be ready until the release of Service Pack 1 for Vista.
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Among the more than 150 cybercrime arrests and convictions announced Thursday by the Department of Justice was an original: the nation&#39;s first case alleging denial of service attacks against competitors to knock them offline.
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Criminals deploy zombies herded into netwoks of a few hundred to more than half a million compromised PCs. Uses vary from the simply annoying (spam attacks) to the unsavory and criminal.
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Online criminals are thriving even in the face of new automated defenses.
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Cablevision and Comcast coddling criminals? Several weeks ago, security researcher Lawrence Baldwin dispatched an urgent email to abuse handlers at OptimumOnline, the broadband provider owned by Cablevision, warning that one of its customers stood to lose more than $60,000 to cyber crooks.â¦
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Some years ago, I got a job doing network support for the District Attorneyâs office in a large city that shall remain nameless. When I arrived, the network was a mess! Malware was rampant, Internet and WAN connections were saturated, and users were constantly complaining about slow computers and network performance. Even so, my attempts to enforce a mindful security policy were met with fierce resistance. The attitude among the legal staff was, âThis is my computer and my network; youâre just a computer janitor.â
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Report outlines challenges governments face and the actions they can take to counter cybercrime.
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Companies that have spent billions on cyberdefenses to thwart intruders are now addressing an even bigger threat: employees. Many are investing in software that monitors sensitive content inside corporate networks, say security analysts and venture capitalists.
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Federal law enforcement may be heralding Operation Web Snare as the largest cyber-crime crackdown of its kind, but it is receiving mixed reviews on whether it will stymie the rise in Internet fraud.