Distinctive Malware Attacks Keep on Growing

According to Cisco, which released its most recent quarterly report, there's a growing use of Advanced Persistent Threat assaults aimed at business organizations. EWeek.com published this on August 1, 2011.

The report, which's named "Global Threat Report" by Security Intelligence Operations of Cisco, issued on August 1, 2011, states that during June 2011, there'd been 287,298 distinct malware attacks. Further, according to Cisco, when 2011 had started, this number was four times less.

Besides, the report also indicates that most of the malware attacks were Web-based when employees did Web-surfing taking them onto malevolent sites. And in spite of the increased attacks, there was a relative consistency in the total instances of distinct hosts supporting malware as well as distinct IP addresses during March 2011 through June 2011.

Giving his opinion within the report, Manager Gavin Reid of CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) suggested that if Advanced Packaging Tools (APTs) could be detected with the help of some kind of software signature then there wouldn't be any requirement for naming them Advanced Persistent Threats. He added that incase anybody tried to sell an enterprise software or hardware way out for APTs, it implied that he either didn't know what APTs were, didn't actually know computers' functioning, or was telling a lie.

Meanwhile, Cisco's experts didn't describe a malware attack as being solely malware contaminating just one computer rather they described it as including those assaults too wherein a key downloader initially contaminated a computer, analyzed the machine as well as pulled down further increasingly-sophisticated data-stealing malicious programs.

Here Reid says that cyber-criminals depend on malicious software for staying secret that help them to constantly maneuver a computer remotely and simultaneously stay practically unnoticed. He adds that identifying APTs as distinct malware isn't all that easy since there's nothing like software signature capable of doing so on any PC-network, EWeek.com reports.

Nevertheless, organizations can become more capable of identifying and handling APTs provided they've a technology that inspects packages deeply while taking care of the crucial gateways within the network through which inbound and outbound traffic connect with the organization, the report elaborates.

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» SPAMfighter News - 8/11/2011