Category: Statistics

The antivirus company’s biannual Internet Security Threat Report found that 4,496 new Windows viruses and worms were released between January and June, up more than 4.5 times from the same period last year. But the daily volume of actual attacks decreased in the first six months of 2004, Symantec said.

From January through June, 1,237 new vulnerabilities were discovered, with 70 percent in the easy-to-exploit category and 96 percent considered moderate or highly severe. Nearly 39 percent of the total volume of attacks were linked with Web applications.

Slammer worm was the most common attack, with 15 percent of attacking IP addresses performing an attack related to Slammer.

Gaobot, also known as Agobot, and its variants increased by more than 600 percent over the past six months and took second place, the company said.

E-commerce was the single most targeted industry, with nearly 16 percent of attacks directed against it, compared with 4 percent reported during the previous six months.

Symantec said the rise could possibly be due to attacks motivated by economic gain, reflected to a rising number of phishing scams and spyware. “Exploits are being created more easily and faster than ever, while attackers are launching more sophisticated attacks for financial gain,” Arthur Wong, vice president of Symantec’s Security Response and Managed Security Services units, said in a statement.

The security software maker said Web application technologies have emerged as attractive targets for attacks, as they are widely used in businesses and can be attacked with relative ease.

Nearly 82 percent of Web application vulnerabilities were classified as easy to exploit, Symantec said. The average number of bots jumped from 2,000 to 30,000 a day.

The number of different variants of bots is rising, increasing by 600 percent over the past six months, through peer-to-peer services, Internet relay chat and network file sharing.

Adware is becoming problematic, accounting for half of the malicious code submissions.

The software maker said attacks targeted at firewalls, routers and other security devices are likely to go up in future.

There may also be more bot networks that employ sophisticated techniques usually difficult to detect and locate.

Symantec also expects to see port knocking, which may be used by attackers to create direct connections to potential target systems.

Virus-related information of totally 7, 072 departments, including those in governments, finance, education and research, telecommunication, commerce, was collected. Plus, over 8,400 computer users were covered.

The survey was launched by the Bureau Public Information and Internet Security Supervision under the Ministry of Public Security and the Professional Committee of Computer Security of China Computer Federation.

The survey shows that 87.9-percent infection rate among the computers of users in Chin, 2 percent up from the last year.

The most widespread computer viruses are Internet Worm virus and the viruses or vicious codes targeting Internet-browsing software: “Worm.Sasser”, “Worm.NetSky”, “Worm.Nimda” and “Digispid.B.Worm” etc. Internet-aimed destruction is on a rampant rise.

Particularly devastating but less detectable are those computer viruses stealing sensitive information of computer users, e.g. user account and password.

58 percent of the surveyed departments have had accidents in cyber security and 36 percent of the incidents are caused by massive transmission of spam.

As analyzed the main causes of Internet security incidents are: poor implementation of regulations, low security awareness, ill-trained management staff in security and a lack of effective channel of security information reporting. Moreover security service trades incapable of meeting the needs of the society remain a tough problem.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200409/14/eng20040914_156990.html

According to the ninth annual Computer Security Institute/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey, when asked about security spending as a percentage of their overall IT budget, nearly half of the 494 respondents pegged it at 1 to 5 percent, 15 percent put it at 6 to 10 percent, 8 percent indicated that security accounted for more than 10 percent of all IT expenditures, and 14 percent said they didn’t know.

Economies of scale allow larger companies to spend less per employee, while companies in certain industries (transportation, high tech, and telecommunications, as well as federal and state governments) spend far more heavily per employee than companies in the medical, retail, and manufacturing sectors, according to the ninth annual Computer Security Institute/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey.

Asked about what metrics were applied to security spending, one-third of the respondents didn’t respond. Of the 320 that did respond, slightly more than half said security spending decisions were subject to ROI analysis, while the other half was split between net present value and internal rate of return.

Outsourcing of computer security has yet to take hold to any meaningful degree: nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they don’t outsource any aspect of security, and less than 1 percent said they outsource all of it. Slightly more than one-fourth of the respondents said they have signed on for some form of cybersecurity risk insurance.

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/3193414?f=advancesearch

According to the Trend Micro World Wide Tracking Centre, Sasser was the most prevalent virus in August with 325,409 victims and made up nearly 31 percent of infections in the August top 10 virus list.

Mark Sinclair, Trend Australia’s technical services manager, said both viruses were written by the same programmer; an 18-year old German who was responsible for 77 percent of infections by the top ten viruses in August. “According to Trend Micro statistics, the NetSky series has been listed among the top ten viruses since February, accounting for over half of the top ten viruses between April and July.

Most of the new viruses were variations of previous viruses, with eight new variants of the Worm _rbot series, and nine variants of the Worm_sdbot series. Another possible motive is to build a dormant “dark” network that could be used in the future to perform a large-scale attack against one or more targets.

“Mass mailers usually feature executable file attachments and stripping these attachments at the gateway is a simple method of reducing infection,” Sinclair said. “The authors of Bagle continue to wage war on Netsky; proof of concept viruses are appearing for wireless devices and 64 bit operating systems and phishing/keyboard logging Trojans are becoming more prevalent,” he said. “The potential to see new damaging network worms such as Sasser, SQL Slammer and Blaster is always there.

The top five targets of Internet bank fraud in August were US Bank, Citibank, Suntrust Bank, eBay and Paypal.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/0,2000061744,39158445,00.htm

Just over half of the FTSE 350 (53 per cent) believe the IT department should be solely responsible for enforcing information security management; 71 per cent think their IT department should be accountable for implementing and delivering a security policy. But investors think differently, with 87 per cent of those interviewed by LogicaCMG expecting a company board to actively review its security vulnerabilities.

This difference of opinion goes deeper, with around half of companies believing that there would be no impact on share price following a security breach.

But 83 per cent of investors indicated it would have a major impact and 68 per cent said it would influence their decision to buy or sell shares in the company.

Negative publicity and damage to their brand are what companies think would be the major effects of a security breach. Around 84 per cent of companies think a breach could adversely affect their brand, while 86 per cent highlighted negative publicity as their main concern.

Opinion is less divided on this issue, with 61 per cent of investors believing that a security breach would damage a company’s reputation.

The LogicaCMG survey also highlighted consumer concerns, with 24 per cent of respondents saying they would move their business to a competitor if a company were involved in a security breach; 23 per cent said they would never make a purchase from the offending firm again, and one in 10 said they would tell friends to steer clear.

“These research findings illustrate the wide gap between business leaders and investors views about the importance placed on information security governance,” said Dave Martin, UK principal security expert at LogicaCMG. “It’s not just abut damage to the brand, but also damage to the share value and market capitalisation and this realisation should prompt business leaders to take a more holistic approach to information security governance. “Unless a company can illustrate that it has sound governance of its information assets, it is exposing itself to potentially severe consequences from consumers, shareholders and regulators alike.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/investors_it_security_funk/

By passing the buck wholesale to the IT department companies are exposing a number of flaws across their organisation – from the top down – and even a tightening of legislation and increased emphasis on accountability and corporate governance has done little to interest the head-in-the-sand ‘higher ups’ that they should be getting involved and delegating tasks effectively.

According to independent research conducted by Coleman Parkes on behalf of LogicaCMG, 53 per cent of companies entrust the IT department with the sole enforcement of the information security policy. In addition, 71 per cent of companies rely on the IT department to implement information security policies and approaches – despite the fact that much of the planning should relate to HR and legal issues as much as to the technology in place.

Sal Viveros, SME director at security giant McAfee, believes one of the biggest obstacles to effectively managing security issues centrally from the IT department is the perception of other employees. Viveros said as a result those in the IT department are often seen as “the bad guys” and coupled with a perceived lack of seniority within the company this makes it difficult for them to dictate, manage and enforce policy.

While staff may sit up and take notice of a policy handed down by HR or a member of senior management, because the trail of accountability and its direct link to discipline procedures is evident, employees may feel less inclined to treat seriously the requests of the IT department.

In a separate study conducted by MORI, also on behalf of LogicaCMG, 83 per cent of investors said a security breach of any kind would impact that companies’ share price and 56 per cent they would sell their shares in the event of a breach.

The fact companies are seemingly doing little about getting on top of security is made all the more surprising by the fact companies are aware of such risks.

http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39123732,00.htm