Industry Discusses Dominant Malicious Online Activities of 2011

According to security researchers, personalized assaults and hacking schemes of special types were the most prominent security threats during 2011, published eweek.com dated 27th December, 2011.

Regarded as one historic year, 2011 had several spheres of importance for security experts. These included sophisticated data-breaches and cyber-assaults. However, the year was also marked with several incidents that exuded certain feeling of déjà vu amidst security witnesses.

CTO, Harry Sverdlove of Bit9 said that the number of personalized assaults was unlike ever-before, with a few extremely sophisticated and others based on rudiment though effective techniques. Eweek.com published this.

One major instance of the way cyber-criminals become advanced in pilfering intellectual property was the data-hack on RSA Security, wherein the attackers dispatched one electronic mail captioned, "2011 Recruitment Plan" to 2 batches of workers. One worker, who clicked on the e-mail, didn't realize that an .exe file, attached thereof and carrying one Flash movie, injected malicious software into the PC-network of the company. Consequently, the attackers gained access to the network that subsequently cost 40m pounds in losses to RSA, the company admitted.

The attack kept on making adverse impacts and during May 2011, eventually Lockheed Martin, Customer and Defense Contractor at RSA acknowledged the hack.

Worryingly, during 2011, it became perceptible to businesses that an organization needn't be sufficiently large alternatively sufficiently small for staying protected from data-hacks or cyber-assaults. The Shady Remote Access Tool (RAT) operation that attacked around 70 businesses within numerous countries as also various sectors utilized a common command-and-control (C&C) computer-server. Spread over 5-yrs-or-more, the attacks targeted businesses from real estate, energy, technology and finance; The International Olympic Committee; and governments. Meanwhile, like it's typical of personalized assaults, Shady RAT widely distributed spear phishing e-mails that were based on social engineering and deceptively made recipients click on malware.

Moreover, alongside these cyber-incidences, 2011 witnessed more-and-more of protests from communities through hacks who wished to lobby something alternatively aimed at disparaging the goodwill among enterprises or other organizations. Indeed the 2 major hackers' cabals reported during 2011 were Lulzsec and Anonymous.

Lastly, there were increased mobile-malware programs too during 2011, the researchers added.

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