Cybercrooks Concentrating on Increasing Malicious Attacks

As per the recent security report released by Microsoft, there has been a considerable surge in the usage of marketing strategies and fraud techniques to steal money and data from innocent users, as reported by Info Security on May 12, 2011.

The report highlighted that, cybercriminals continue to add in social baits that seems to be legal marketing campaigns and product promotions. Six of the leading 10 most widespread malware families during H2- 2010 fell into these classes of attack technique.

Across the threat scenario, the firm noticed a specific polarization in terms of criminal behavior. On one hand, there are a small number of complicated attackers, whose intentions differ from large payoffs to targeted attacks.

On the other hand, there are cyber attackers, who leverage more accessible attack techniques, in few instances actually developed by the more skilled cybercrooks, along with social tactics to get a small sum of money from large number of peoples.

Commenting on the matter, Jeff Williams, Principal group program manager at the Microsoft malware Protection Center, stated that, the marketing-like tactics comprise both when one is browsing the web and when one is getting e-mails. He further added that, users might face a tough time differentiating among a genuine business marketing campaign and the illegal one, which is creating a surge in malware and associated breaches, as reported by Info Security on May 12, 2011.

Malware ridden websites generally seem absolutely legal and usually offer no apparent indicators of their malicious nature, even to knowledgeable computer users.

As per the report, during H1- 2010, attackers showed indications of targeting online gaming websites with rising frequency, though this push seemed to have decreased as social networks came under augmented attack. Impressions that targeted gaming websites reached 16.7% of all impressions during June prior to declining to a more general 2.1% during December (2010).

Williams further stated that, these are places, where there are several customers and have passwords and credentials that can be compromised via keylogging and other methods. These websites provide crooks the chance to monetize in several ways, whether that is via in-game transactions, money transactions, or similar tactics, as reported by Info Security on May 12, 2011.

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» SPAMfighter News - 5/21/2011