Hackers Exploit Microsoft’s PowerPoint To Target Companies

Malicious software writers have made Microsoft's PowerPoint their most preferred medium for contaminating corporate computer systems.

For once, PowerPoint has overtaken Microsoft Word as the most popular malware spreader, and cyber-terrorists are progressively directing their corporate crimes towards this medium, as per an article issued by MessageLabs on April 18, 2007.

There's a particular gang that boasts of toting up the maximum number of PowerPoint violations. Majority of the infringements are found to be initiating from an IP address in Taiwan, MessageLab's article mentioned.

The research revealed that PowerPoint now accounts for nearly 45 per cent of the incursions, as opposed to 35 per cent in Word files.

In its report on spam invasions of March 2007, the organization even indicated that cyber-terrorists have nowadays quit the conventional distributed method of premeditated strikes. Rather than conveying infinite spam e-mails intended to defraud the end-users into revealing vital details, a cyber-terrorist directs a detailed message to just a few individuals holding a particular post within a company.

According to MessageLabs it found 249 individually directed attacks solely intended for 216 companies in March 2007. Almost 200 of them were individually directed attacks that included a specific e-mail planned to attack one company, the study mentioned.

That's a sizeable growth since March 2006, when just a couple of pointed incursions were initiated daily.

The most popular victims were public sector computer systems, followed by the electronics and aviation segments.

Remarkably, cyber-terrorists are not infiltrating fiscal organizations, though this might be due to better security system.

"The hackers recognize which companies have information worth pilfering and are selecting them individually," alleged Alex Shipp, MessageLabs' senior antivirus technologist, in a report in 19th April 2007 edition of iTnews.com.au.

"These aimed infringements are very hard to find since a sizeable bulk contains a specific e-mail to someone, thereby implying they don't have antivirus signatures composed by conventional anti-virus program. But, if you are that single corporation aimed, the outcome could be destructive."

Another account from Kaspersky Lab in February 2007 had forecasted that extensive worm outbreak would continue to be substituted by directed violations against particular organizations in 2007.

Related article: Hackers Redirect Windows Live Search to Malicious Sites

» SPAMfighter News - 4/24/2007