The Conficker pandemic continues to hurt Internet users!
- A quick update on cyber attacks hitting the news in Q1, 2009
The Conficker worm and its variants A, B and C can give any marketer a run for his money when it comes to reaching maximum people in minimum time. Conficker today affects 15 million users worldwide! Here’s a quick look at the modus operandi of each one of these. The Conficker A worm exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, gets into the system and generates a list of 250 random domains. The infected system then communicates with the domains until it finds the one that has been set up with a payload with further instructions. Conficker B passes from one computer to another through network shares and USB devices. The deadliest of the lot, Conficker C invalidates the security solution within the system and blocks security update websites, making it difficult to fight back against it. Adding teeth to its menace is the fact that it generates 50,000 domains every day!
Other growing trends in the Internet threat scenario in Q1 2009 were phishing attacks using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Phishers exploited communities of friends and their sentiments through direct messages that asked for money or personal and financial information. The popular tech site, ZDNet, was exploited in the last quarter by emails that recommended a technology article as a Google doc by ZDNet’s Tech Update service. The hyperlink in the email led to an advertisement for International Rx.
ISPs continued to suffer the brunt of cyber miscreants, who modified their tactics by targeting one ISP at a time rather than sending large numbers of emails to many ISPs, to avoid detection and blacklisting.
Spammers continued to borrow legitimacy of popular websites by stealing images from genuine websites to avoid detection by traditional image spam filters. They created fake landing pages to extract personal information.
Spam levels averaged 72% of all email traffic throughout the quarter with loan spam topping the list of spam topics. An average of 302, 000 zombies were activated each day during this quarter with Brazil reported as the biggest hub of zombies.
Check the detailed report on Internet Threat Trends in Q1 2009.
The Conficker worm and its variants A, B and C can give any marketer a run for his money when it comes to reaching maximum people in minimum time. Conficker today affects 15 million users worldwide! Here’s a quick look at the modus operandi of each one of these. The Conficker A worm exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, gets into the system and generates a list of 250 random domains. The infected system then communicates with the domains until it finds the one that has been set up with a payload with further instructions. Conficker B passes from one computer to another through network shares and USB devices. The deadliest of the lot, Conficker C invalidates the security solution within the system and blocks security update websites, making it difficult to fight back against it. Adding teeth to its menace is the fact that it generates 50,000 domains every day!
Other growing trends in the Internet threat scenario in Q1 2009 were phishing attacks using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Phishers exploited communities of friends and their sentiments through direct messages that asked for money or personal and financial information. The popular tech site, ZDNet, was exploited in the last quarter by emails that recommended a technology article as a Google doc by ZDNet’s Tech Update service. The hyperlink in the email led to an advertisement for International Rx.
ISPs continued to suffer the brunt of cyber miscreants, who modified their tactics by targeting one ISP at a time rather than sending large numbers of emails to many ISPs, to avoid detection and blacklisting.
Spammers continued to borrow legitimacy of popular websites by stealing images from genuine websites to avoid detection by traditional image spam filters. They created fake landing pages to extract personal information.
Spam levels averaged 72% of all email traffic throughout the quarter with loan spam topping the list of spam topics. An average of 302, 000 zombies were activated each day during this quarter with Brazil reported as the biggest hub of zombies.
Check the detailed report on Internet Threat Trends in Q1 2009.
Labels: email threats, Malware attacks
posted by Harish Chib at
4:32 PM
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