Category: Statistics

“Addresses on Intercage’s network range were being used to host command and control channels for botnets,” Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at the messaging security specialist said in a report summary.

Overall, the company’s research group found that the global ratio of spam traffic from previously unknown sources reached 70.1 percent (1 in 1.43 e-mails) of all e-mail in September, a decrease of 8.1 percent compared to the previous month.

In the world of message-based malware threats, MessageLabs reported that over 45 percent of the infection-laden e-mails it filtered represented newly-created attacks. One in 288.1 (0.35 percent) of all e-mails intercepted by the researchers harbored some form of phishing attack during the month. However, compared to other threats including Trojans and botnets, the sheer number of phishing e-mails decreased by 29 percent to 45.7 percent of all message-based attacks tracked in September. Phishing levels for Q3 2008 were at their lowest level since Q2 2006 and have continued to diminish since the beginning of this year, based on the company’s numbers.

http://securitywatch.eweek.com/spam/spam_trends_down.html

“The malware for the fake iPhone games was named by the major anti-virus vendors as being associated with the Srizbi botnet.

Although Srizbi is still prevalent, it has been overtaken by the Cutwail/Rustock botnet as it relates to daily mail volumes.”

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Malware-in-Email-Rose-Dramatically-in-September-Security-Pros-Report/?kc=WBGNLSTE10092008STR3

According to the ITRC, subcontractor breaches, which affect multiple businesses, are listed as a single event.

As for the number of individuals affected by the breaches, it’s anyone’s guess.

Colleges and universities, on the other hand, are on pace to reduce breaches for the third consecutive year after accounting for 28 percent in 2006 and 24.8 percent in 2007.

Mobile data losses through laptops, thumbscrew drives and PDAs have accounted for the largest number of breaches both in 2008 (20.3 percent) and 2007 (27.8 percent).

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Data-Breaches-Reach-Record-High/?kc=WBGNLSTE10092008STR4

Not surprisingly, with rogue security malware claiming the top four positions in this month’s Top 10 list, it also propelled the RogueSecurity family into the No. 1 position among malware family activities for the entire month.

“When we see unprecedented volume, as in the case of these rogue security applications, it usually indicates that the attacks are working, and that cybercriminals are trying to act fast to take full advantage of the situation… In order to not fall into these traps, consumers should ensure that the source of their security application purchases are legitimate… Consumers should look out for unsolicited system messages which typically claim to find hundreds of infections, followed by purchase requests to cleanse.”

Fortinet’s FortiGuard® Global Security Research Team compiled this report based on intelligence gathered from FortiGate® multi-threat security systems in production worldwide. Customers who use Fortinet’s FortiGuard Subscription Services are already protected against the threats outlined in this report. FortiGuard Subscription Services offer broad security solutions including antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web content filtering and anti-spam capabilities.

FortiGuard Services are updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and zero-day protection from new and emerging threats.

Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection–including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam — designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats.

http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;750619918

“As you globalize and move into new regions that you haven’t worked in before, you really need to understand the cultural differences” in order to implement an effective data protection strategy, said Marie Hattar, Cisco’s vice president of network and security solutions.

For example, about 64% of the IT decision-makers surveyed in China and nearly half of the ones in Brazil said they thought that employees at their companies allowed outsiders to use corporate laptops and mobile devices without any supervision.

Meanwhile, 39% of the end users polled in Brazil and 20% in India admitted to sharing sensitive information about their jobs with family members and friends; another 8% and 7%, respectively, said they had shared such data with absolute strangers. In a majority of the cases, the survey respondents said they discussed sensitive information with others because they wanted to bounce an idea off of someone or just vent.

Compared with workers in other countries, a significantly larger proportion of end users in China (42%), Brazil (26%) and India (20%) altered the security settings on their company-issued laptops.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9116018&source=NLT_AM&nlid=1

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,62046412,00.htm