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Botnet closures fail to stem flow of spam in the first quarter of 2011

On May 31, 2011   /   Computer Security, Security News, Virus and Spyware   /   Leave a comment

The closure of the Rustock botnet command centres on 16 March 2011 did not impact spam traffic as dramatically as last year’s Pushdo/Cutwail and Bredolab closures. The quantity of spam fell by about two per cent, but increased shortly after; according to Kaspersky Lab’s quarterly spam report.

“This could be due to the closure of SpamIt, a large pharmaceutical partner program, and the fact that Rustock, which specialised in pharmaceutical spam, may well have ceased sending out mass mailings at the end of last year. It is also possible that the cybercriminals preferred to lie low for a while given the interest in botnets shown by law enforcement agencies towards the end of 2010,” explains Darya Gudkova, head of content analysis and research at Kaspersky Lab.

As a result, the amount of spam detected in mail traffic in the first quarter of 2011 was just under 80 per cent. This was a slight increase compared with the previous quarter, but was considerably less than the corresponding figure for last year.

Sources of spam

The Asian and Latin American share of the total volume of spam worldwide grew, while the amount of spam originating from eastern and western Europe fell. Africa also joined the list of the most active spam senders with the volume of unsolicited messages coming from African countries exceeding that of the USA and Canada. These figures are in line with Kaspersky Lab’s forecasts that botnets would start shifting to regions with less effective or non-existent anti-spam legislation. However, cybercriminal activity suggests that in future botnets will also be developed in better protected regions.

Spammer tricks and techniques

Spammers also made use of some tried and tested techniques to avoid detection. Sending out spam emails containing a link to a video clip advertising anti-spammer services was one of them. Another trick saw emails that read “Stop sending me spam” allegedly written by an angry recipient. The email was in fact itself spam with a link leading to a malicious site.

Malware in mail traffic

Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen maintained its leading position in the Top 10 rating of malicious programs distributed via mail traffic in the first quarter of 2011. The most notable entries in the Top 10 malicious program to spread spam via email belonged to a mail worm family, which accounted for four of the rating’s ten entries.

Phishing

The 2011 Q1 report highlights how the volume of phishing emails was very small and accounted for only 0.03 per cent of all mail traffic. PayPal and eBay remained in the unenviable position of being the organisations most frequently targeted by phishers. “Notably, in the first quarter of 2011 Google services such as Google AdWords and Google Checkout were attacked less. The phishers switched their attentions to the highly popular Brazilian social network Orkut which is owned by Google,” said Maria Namestnikova, senior spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab. “It is worth mentioning that user accounts belonging to Google’s services, including Orkut, are interconnected. Thus, having acquired credentials for one of these accounts, a cybercriminal can access any Google service registered to the same user.”

Click here to view the full version of spam in the first quarter of 2011.

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Cybercriminals expand repertoire of tricks to avoid detection

On May 16, 2011   /   Security News, Virus and Spyware   /   Leave a comment

March was testament to the fact that cybercriminals are not averse to exploiting tragedies in order to spread malware, according to the recent monthly malware report from Kaspersky Lab.

In March, scammers and malware writers used the devastating events in Japan to spread malicious links to their own versions of the “latest news”. Cybercriminals created malicious websites with content connected in some way to the disaster and sent out letters making emotional requests for money to be transferred to the message sender in order to help those who have suffered.

Intrusion techniques

March also saw cybercriminals use Java exploits as a weapon of choice. Of the five exploits to appear in the Top 20 malicious programs on the Internet in March, three of them were for vulnerabilities in Java.

Malware writers were also surprisingly quick to react to announcements of new vulnerabilities. A good example of this is a vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player that allowed cybercriminals to gain control of a user’s computer. The vulnerability was announced by Adobe on 14 March and by the next day, Kaspersky Lab had already detected an exploit for it.

Protection against antivirus programs

Another notable trend was that the malevolent users behind HTML pages that are used in scams or to spread malware are constantly coming up with new ways to hide their creations from antivirus programs. In February cybercriminals were using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to protect scripts from being detected. Now, instead of CSS, they are using tags on their malicious HTML pages. Cybercriminals use the tag as a container to store data that will later be used by the main script. For example, Trojan-Downloader.JS.Agent.fun at 9th position in the Top 20 rating of malicious programs on the Internet uses the data in the tag to run other exploits.

In addition, according to Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) statistics, malware writers are actively modifying the exploits they use in drive-by attacks in order to avoid detection.

Mobile threats

At the beginning of March, Kaspersky Lab’s experts detected infected versions of legitimate apps on Android Market. They contained root exploits that allow a malicious program to obtain root access on Android smartphones, giving full administrator-level access to the device’s operating system. As well as a root exploit, the malicious APK archive contained two other malicious components. One of them sent an XML file containing IMEI, IMSI and other device information to a remote server and awaited further instructions. The other component had Trojan-downloader functionality.

For a complete version of Kaspersky Lab’s March malware report, please visit here…

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Spam and virus protection are top email priorities, with 3 in 4 businesses still not keen on cloud

On May 2, 2011   /   Computer Security, Money and Business, Virus and Spyware   /   Leave a comment

Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity and archiving, has today released research revealing that IT teams are still struggling to protect their businesses from spam email and viruses. The research also finds that the majority of organisations are yet to embrace the benefits of cloud-based email, while struggling to cope with an increasingly complex email environment.

The research, which surveyed IT and security professionals on the first day of the Infosecurity Europe conference in London, found that anti-spam and anti-virus is by far the biggest headache for IT teams; 78 percent of respondents identified it as their top email concern. With 72 percent saying that their current spam prevention system is not ‘very effective’, it is clear that there is significant room for improvement when it comes to protecting employees from malicious email.

“Although spam and virus concerns are by no means a new phenomenon, it is very surprising that more than three quarters of IT managers still see them as their biggest email headache,” commented Barry Gill, Product Marketing Manager at Mimecast. “This is perhaps a sign that IT teams should be re-examining the way that they counter these threats. For instance by working with a cloud specialist, under pressure IT teams can gain access to a level of security resources and expertise that simply isn’t sustainable in-house.”

Despite cloud dominating much of the talk at this year’s Infosecurity Europe, it seems cloud adopters remain in a minority. The research reveals that three quarters of organisations (75 percent) are still entirely reliant on an on-premise email architecture. 12 percent of businesses now have a fully cloud-based email environment with 13 percent using a combination of on-premise and cloud-based email technology.

“Although cloud-based email services seem to still be in the minority, there is a clear appetite for the kind of benefits that the cloud can deliver,” Gill continued. “51 percent of respondents identified ‘unlimited email storage’ as the one thing that would make managing their email environment easier, while 22 percent said they would want a system that could be managed more simply.”

Email policy was another area of concern at Infosecurity Europe 2011 with 48 percent of organisations struggling to strike a balance over the use of personal email accounts, such as Hotmail or Gmail, in the workplace. 27 percent admitted that the use of personal email at work was a ‘huge problem’ and a ‘severe’ security threat. More concerning however are the 16 percent of businesses who allow employees to use their personal Hotmail or Gmail account for work use because it ‘suits users’ needs more than our business systems’. Five percent of organisations have banned the use of personal email accounts at work altogether.

Gill continued; “Email policies need to evolve to reflect the high levels of sophistication among today’s email users. Sending work-related emails and documents from personal email accounts represents a major security threat but, due to the user-friendly nature of systems like Gmail, it is becoming all too common. In many instances employees know how they should be behaving but they choose to ignore corporate email policy so that they can use the tool they feel they need to get the job done. IT teams should be looking to improve their own systems so that they are reliable, flexible and user-friendly enough that employees do not feel the need to go elsewhere.”

Mimecast’s Justin Pirie spoke at Infosec about the threats user behaviour and personal email poses to business. To find out more, download Mimecast’s Generation Gmail report..

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Cyber Criminals Target Smartphones as Malware Increases by a Third in 2010

On December 19, 2010   /   Computer Security, Crime, Virus and Spyware   /   Leave a comment

Smarter devices and the rise of open mobile platforms is leading to the emergence of increasingly intelligent mobile malware.

AdaptiveMobile, the world leader in mobile security, today announces that 2010 has seen the highest ever number of mobile malware infections aimed at Smartphone users, with the number of reports up 33 per cent on 2009 figures.

Taking a year-on-year view, malware engineered for the Google Android mobile platform rose most significantly, with a four-fold increase in the number of exploits identified throughout 2010 – although the total number of Android exploits is still at a low level relative to older platforms. The sharp rise comes as cyber criminals shift their focus towards those technologies and platforms that are likely to see the most widespread adoption in coming years. Such viruses put mobile subscribers at risk of monetary, privacy or data loss, often before the user even realises there is a problem. Smartphones running Java-based applications saw the second highest increase in malware reports, up 45 per cent on 2009. Reported exploits aimed at the iPhone declined, whilst new Symbian malware also fell by 11 per cent. WinCE-based viruses rose by seven per cent.

“With the increasing pervasiveness of Smartphone devices, 2010 has undoubtedly been the year that fraudsters have truly turned their attention to mobile platforms,” says Gareth Maclachlan, Chief Operating Officer, AdaptiveMobile. “The vast majority of consumers are acutely aware of the threats that PC-based viruses, spam messages and phishing emails pose, but many are still unaware of the risks associated with their mobile devices.

“With Smartphone penetration reported to reach 37 per cent in Europe and 44 per cent in the US by 2012,* we predict that the number of threats targeted at unsuspecting mobile users will continue to increase at an exponential rate throughout the course of 2011. Even more significantly, the nature of the threats we are seeing will increase in sophistication. Whereas the majority of existing threats target either SMS, voice, email or web, the next year will see the emergence of the ‘compound threat’ – intelligent scams designed to exploit multiple phone capabilities in order to reap maximum reward for the criminals, before the user even realises they have become a victim.”

Mclachlan concludes; “This trend towards more sophisticated attacks is set to shake up the telecoms and security markets as traditional approaches to protecting subscribers can simply no longer provide adequate protection. As these compound threats continue to emerge, so does the need for an intelligent approach to mobile security – keeping the industry one step ahead of the criminals to ensure that such threats do not reach mobile users in the first place.”

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Seven Security Tips to Protect Against Instant Messaging Worm

On November 29, 2010   /   Computer Security, Virus and Spyware   /   Leave a comment

A few days ago, an unnamed computer worm forced Microsoft to temporarily suspend active links in its Live Messenger 2009 to prevent the aggressive instant messaging (IM) worm spreading. Instant messaging is a very effective way for malware to stay active and thrive. As time progresses, cybercriminals are refining their techniques to lure potential victims to visit malicious hyperlinks.

Mark James, technical manager at ESET UK comments, “This is quite a surprising measure, because worms spreading through Instant Messaging (IM) such as Skype, Yahoo! Messenger and Microsoft Live Messenger are not new at all. For example, the AimVen worm was discovered in 2003 and was targeting the America Online Instant Messenger platform,”

James continues, “The modus operandi for this type of attack is simple. First the victim receives a message that contains a hyperlink from one of their contacts, clicks on it and gets infected. The worm can also use geo-localisation in order to use the victim’s language and even relate to news or events trending in the victim’s country. These advanced techniques may trick even the most cautious users.

ESET has compiled seven golden security rules while instant messaging:

1. Opening pictures, downloading files or clicking links should be avoided at all cost in case it comes from someone you do not know. Do not open suspicious files or links even if they come for someone you know; try to confirm with the person on the origin of the attachment.
2. Do not reply to messages from people you don’t know if you were not expecting them. If someone you do not recognise sends you a request to add him/her to your contacts, decline the request if not sure about the identity of the contact.
3. Unwanted messages ought to be blocked – blocking spam or messages from strangers might be easier than you think – most IM software allows you to create your own contact list.
4. Do not post sensitive information and private data in instant messages, especially refrain from sharing credit card numbers, banking details, passwords or important personal identification data like phone number or addresses. You should also avoid sharing information about your IM name or e-mail contact over the Internet.
5. Your Instant Messaging should also have as strong a password as any other account. Always use different passwords for different accounts and other online services (such as online banking, e-mail). Do not recycle your password. If you log in on public or shared computer, make sure to uncheck the automatic login feature.
6. Avoid meeting strangers that you have met online while instant messaging. If you decide to meet someone in real person anyway, take safety precautions – bring someone along with you.
7. Turn off your Web camera if you are not using it, as some malware allows criminals and strangers to spy on you through your own webcam. If you have an integrated camera, always check the control light that it is off when you are not using it.

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