Hackers will Intensify Attacks on both ‘Good’ & ‘Bad’ Sites

Trend Micro, the computer security firm, has warned through its Threat Report for 2007 and 2008 Forecast that hackers are increasing attacks on authentic sites with the purpose of spreading malware, as reported by vnunet on February 20, 2008.

Trend Micro has shammed the belief that users will be in trouble by visiting only questionable sites. According to the security firm, when a user visits a porn or gambling site, he does not necessarily fall in the Web threat loop. On the other hand, authentic sites or links from a search engine hits could potentially harm visitors with malicious code.

The infamous malware industry has established a flourishing market for itself by taking advantage of the Web users' confidence and trust. For instance, the Russian Business Network operated its notorious activities all through 2007 by hosting phishing, Websites that distribute malware, and pornography.

The exploit of Windows Animated Cursor contained more than 50% of total exploit codes to launch attacks. Nearly, 74% of infections from it during 2007 were originated in Asia. A similar result flowed from the TROJ_ANICMOO.AX, a linking threat that planted the exploit. Almost, 64% of its infections arrived from the China.

So far, North America pushed nearly half of the total threat infections while infections from Asian countries also increased by 40%.

From the study of the emerging Web threat patterns in 2008, Trend Micro predicts that malicious used to infect operating systems as well as security flaws in popularly used software will continue to be exploited for injecting malicious code. Cyber criminals might exploit these codes to execute malware with the idea to infringe upon computer and related network security and to steal proprietary and confidential information.

Criminals will carry on their attacks on high-profile sites and will use them to host identity theft malware and links, leading to phishing sites. These sites will include financial, social networking, online gaming, commercial ticketing, travel local government, jobs, news, shopping and auction sites, blogs, e-commerce Websites of shopping and auctions and search engines.

File sharing, e-mail and IM will remain subjects to abuse by malicious URLs and image spam, the report predicted. Protection of data and searching advanced security software will become priority of online security vendors, seeing the rampant increase in the malware attacks, said Trend Micro.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 2/27/2008