Banking Trojans double as scareware runs wild
Interwebs clogged up with crimeware
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
The prevalence of scareware packages has reached epidemic proportions, with 485,000 different samples detected in the first half of 2009 alone.
The figure is more than five times the combined figure for the whole of 2008, according to statistics from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). The huge figures are explained by the hacker practice of changing the checksum of every file. The tactic is designed to foil less sophisticated anti-malware defences.
Meanwhile the volume of phishing reports sent to APWG hit a high of 37,165 in May, around seven per cent more than last year’s high of 34,758 in October. Payment services such as PayPal became the principle target of phishing attacks, displacing financial services during the first half of 2009. Sweden eclipsed the US as the country hosting the highest number of phishing fraud websites.
More than half (54 per cent) or 11.9 million of the computers scanned by Panda Security, which contributed to APWG's report, were infected with some form of malware. Banking trojan infections detected by the group almost tripled (up 186 per cent) between Q4 2008 and Q2 2009.
APWG's report can be found here. ®
COMMENTS
Pedant alert
'Payment services such as PayPal became the principle target of phishing attacks ..' The attacks were made on principle? Perhaps you meant 'principal'?
But the spell-Czech said it was ok, huh?
Simple to fix
Don't accept email from servers that are not guaranteeing authenticity and are willing to accept damage costs in the event of spam relay.
Everyone who knows how email works also knows how easy it is to spoof the sender field, even when they check against the senders IP it can be spoofed. However if all email has to be within the ISP domain and they are responsible for the content an abuser can have their account blocked. All free email services should limit new account post if they want to be able to provide a service.
It would be fairly simple to set up via the existing domain registration system, simply a Y/N question if you accept liability for spam, if you don't then you will not have your email relayed.
Problem solved
malvert infestation
What's will all the 'malware' articles recently. And why can't I watch that 'On-demand Webcast' on Ubuntu?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
