Malware Grew Expeditiously During January-June 2008

Sophos, which released its Threat Report for January-June 2008 in the 2nd week of August 2008, noted that cyber criminals motivated with financial gain had been developing and distributing new malware at a very fast pace.

The report reveals that SQL injection attacks were a major headline grabber during the first six months of 2008. These attacks exploited security flaws while injecting malicious code into the database that runs a particular Website.

According to Brett Myroff, CEO of Regional Sophos Distributor, Sophos South Africa, an SQL attack gets effective when input from user, for example an online form not appropriately checked or filtered unusually runs a code, has dropped malicious instructions on the database. Regaining original functioning can be difficult and there are numerous instances when site owners try to purify their database merely to be attacked again after a couple of hours, as reported by ITWeb on September 12, 2008.

Apart from SQL injection attacks, the first six months of 2008 also witnessed other Web-based malware. Hackers have been using reputed Websites such as Geocities and BlogSpot that enable people to set up their own Websites to host malware as new Web pages can be created without disclosing identification.

Moreover, some security software strive to safeguard their users from malware hosted on these Websites for fear that it might prevent access to legitimate sites. In June 2008, Blogger (Blogspot.com) hosted 2% of all the Web-based malware around the world, making it one of the chief hosts of malicious software globally.

Furthermore, the report indicates that nearly 60% of all the Web-based threats during January-June 2008 had affected Apache servers. This was notably higher than in 2007, when Apache servers were associated with less than 49% of all the Web-based infections. With a massive number of Apache servers hosted on Unix or Linux, it becomes clear that the problem of malware does not trouble Microsoft alone.

Myroff says that the first six months of 2008 also witnessed an extremely focused malware attacks that were designed to compromise specific corporations and individuals instead of the entire Internet community.

Related article: Malware Authors Turn More Insidious

» SPAMfighter News - 22-09-2008

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