The complexity and ever-changing threat landscape and the emergence of newer and more complex viruses, malware and hacking techniques by the criminal underworld have been top concerns for businesses in 2007.
In addition, the proliferation of mobile computing and emergence of new computing devices — such as smart phones, thumb drives, and other peripheral devices — are increasing the vulnerable access points for malicious activities to sneak into corporate networks.
2007 INTERNET
SECURITY TRENDS
High-profile data breaches which underscore the importance of data loss prevention technologies and strategies was one of the key trends observed by Symantec in 2007. High profile victims of data breaches were from in a wide variety of categories including financial industries, career recruitment, and retail.
Another Internet security trend observed for this year was the debut of Windows Vista and attackers found security holes in the operating system quickly. To date, Microsoft has already released 16 security patches that impacted the new operating system.
As expected, Spam continued to be a major concern in 2007, with image spam declining and PDF spam seen emerging as a new source of annoyance. A new attack called Greeting-card spam was also seen responsible for delivering the Storm Worm malware (also known as Peacomm).
Professional Attack Kits, particularly the MPack and phishing toolkits, made a big splash in 2007. Attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and organized, and have begun to adopt methods that are similar to traditional software development and business practices. 42% of phishing web sites observed in the first half of the year were associated with phishing toolkits.
Phishing too, was still big in 2007 with an 18% increase in unique phishing sites during the first half of the year. Symantec listed phishing toolkits as a major contributor to the growing problem of Internet security attacks in 2007.
Another menacing trend seen this year were attackers who now prefer to just lie and wait for victims to come to them by exploiting trusted Web sites. Attackers no longer actively seek out their intended victims, they are now compromising trusted sites so that when a user visits that site, the attacker will comprovise the victim's computer.
Joining the 2007 top 10 Internet trend list are bots and botnets, which continued to silently slip into unsecured computers and perpetrate a wide variety of malicious activity. Bots knocked Estonia off the online map while the Storm Worm malware employed bot technology as well.
Web plug-in vulnerabilities and exploits continued to plague IT staffs during 2007. ActiveX controls that comprised majority of plug-in vulnerabilities, posed various security threats that may compromise the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of a vulnerable computer.
Another trend observed in 2007 was Vulnerabilities for Sale, where vulnerabilities were sold in an auction-style system where the highest bidder gets the vulnerability information.
Finally, Virtual Machine Security Implications, made headlines in 2007 with major players going public even though the security implications of virtual technology have not yet been fully understood.
SECURITY TRENDS
TO WATCH IN 2008
Symantec warns that the year 2008 will bring about threats that include dissemination of misinformation, fraud, phishing, and invasion of privacy.
Bots will continue to diversify and evolve in their behavior in 2008. Consumers can also expect to see things like phishing sites hosted by bot zombies, among other forms of attack.
Symantec also expects that the number of new Advanced Web Threats will rise as web services grows and browsers continue to converge on a uniform interpretation standard for scripting languages, such as JavaScript.
As the interest in mobile security is rising, attackers are also likely to take advantage of Mobile Platforms as phones become more complex, more interesting and more connected.
Symantec also expects to see spam continuously evolve in order to evade traditional blocking systems and trick users into reading messages. Consumers can expect to see new types of attachments that contains malicious codes, and spammers will continue to focus on making content more appealing to readers, capitalizing on highly visible current events.
Game enthusiasts are also at greater risk in 2008 as criminals, phishers, spammers, and others turn their attention to Virtual Worlds (PVWs) and massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) expands.
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