Category: Trends

By 2010, the number of IT staff in the profession will shrink by 15 percent, Gartner predicted Tuesday.

Apart from the rise of outsourcers–who often provide their services from lower-cost countries like India–IT departments also face the diffusion of tech skills throughout an organization, Gartner said. “As IT becomes a more integral part of every business function, there will be increasing numbers of people outside the (information systems organization) whose work involves IT,” Gartner said in the report, “and as IT skills become a more important component of business professionalism, in-house IS staff will be displaced.”

The report adds to somewhat confusing signals about the future of the IT profession. The U.S. Department of Labor forecasts that computer software engineering and network systems and data communications analysis will be among the top 10 fastest-growing occupations between 2002 and 2012.

And last fall, a Gartner analyst predicted a shortage of technology professionals in the United States in the near future, thanks to factors such as declining student interest in the tech field.

But a study in 2004 from research organization Rand did not find evidence that shortages of scientific, technical, engineering and mathematics personnel in the U.S. work force are on the horizon. And a separate Gartner analyst last year predicted that over the next 20 years, changes in computing technology will erase the need for much of the work that employs IT staff today.

In addition, the growing trend of shipping IT work offshore seems likely to harm U.S. techies in the form of fewer U.S. jobs created, at least in the short run. A report last year sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America trade group on offshore outsourcing of software and IT services indicated that sacrifices by American IT workers would result in an improved U.S. economy overall.

In its latest report, Gartner forecasts increased involvement by IT staffers in business matters. By 2010, the firm said, 60 percent of the people affiliated with the information systems group will assume “business-facing roles around information, process and relationships.” As a result, Gartner predicted, “the size of the IS organization will decrease, and…by 2010, IT departments in midsize and large companies will be at least one-third smaller than they were in 2000.”

“As we see departments within businesses taking on the traditional functions of IT, so IS professionals and leaders will have to choose between careers as technologists, technical managers and business professionals,” David Flint, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5722019.html

It opens up the floodgates for hackers to infiltrate phone conversations and steal confidential data. And spammers can target the system with massive denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

· Two-thirds of the Global 2000 are expected to implement VoIP by 2006, according to Deloitte Services LP (eWEEK, December 4, 2004).

· In a survey of 500 IT professionals released earlier this year, the Computing Technology Industry Association found that 73 percent of the respondents said they use or plan to use convergence hardware and software over the next 12 months (“Voice-over-IP Offers Greatest Productivity Gains,” February 9, 2005).

· Gartner Inc. expects the market for VoIP services to continue to expand at double-digit rates in 2005 (“North American Business VoIP Services Emerging,” March, 2004).

As the recently formed VoIP Security Alliance has observed, advances in information technology typically outpace the corresponding security requirements, which are often tackled only after these technologies are widely deployed. Such is the case with VoIP today.

Now that VoIP deployments are becoming more widespread, the technology is proving a more attractive target for hackers, increasing the potential for harm from cyberattacks. Moreover, the emergence of VoIP application-level attacks will likely occur as attackers become more familiar with the technology through exposure and easy access. And the consequences of an attack can be staggering. Successful attacks against a combined voice and data network can cripple an enterprise, halt communications required for productivity, and result in irate customers, lost revenue, and brand impairment.

That’s why the VoIP Security Alliance plans to disseminate knowledge of VoIP security risks through discussion lists, white papers, and research projects. The group hopes to spur adoption of VoIP by promoting best practices for companies that adopt the technology, and by warning organizations of threats to VoIP, including spam and DOS attacks.

With enterprise interest in VoIP heating up, Gartner has found that CIOs and network managers are acutely concerned about securing VoIP, so that it provides the same level of security as traditional time division multiplexing (TDM) devices and the public switched telephone network (PSTN). In a recent report (“Voice Over IP Communications Must Be Secured,” November, 2004), Gartner predicts that IP communications will continue to be less secure than TDM communications through 2006; that DoS attacks will regularly be used to disrupt VoIP communications by 2008; and that the next year will see convergence-specific viruses/worms begin to attack VoIP-specific equipment.

Issues include surrounding guaranteed bandwidth, delay, jitter, packet loss, and the timely delivery of signaling messages. It would be easy to use a combination of traditional IP security techniques, payload and signaling encryption. The holdup is that each company must justify the costs of a convergence project and judge whether the potential productivity enhancements and cost savings outweigh the costs of ripping out working telecom gear.

http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=697

“As specialist insurance becomes more affordable, I expect the take up to increase,” said Oliver Brew, a technology underwriter for London-based Hiscox Plc.

Because of vaguely worded state and federal regulations and the impossibility of 100% network security, a new type of insurance claim is emerging — one that protects insured enterprises against privacy-related lawsuits under provisions of the Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, California State Bill 1386 and other regulations.

“We are seeing breach of privacy claims due to unauthorized access to or use of personal identifiable information,” said Peter Foster, senior vice president and co-leader of the information risk management practice at Marsh Inc., a leading risk and insurance services firm. “Regulatory requirements to publish the breach incident are triggering multi-party lawsuits that have cost insurers excess of $1 million per incident in some cases.”

Cyberinsurance covers a number of other areas often not available in traditional business policies, including denial-of-service attacks, damage cased by hackers, malicious insiders, worms and viruses, and electronic theft of confidential information.

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1084419,00.html

Wi-Fi market will continue to grow as the number of hot spots proliferate, and the emerging WiMAX equipment market would also add to growth over the next few years.

TIA expects revenues from spending on Wi-Fi/WiMAX capital expenditures in the US to hit an estimated $22.3 bln in 2005, rising to $29.3 bln by 2008, a compound annual gain of 7.1%. Spending on support services for wireless infrastructure like professional services, depot repair and logistics increased by 13.6% in 2004, up from the 31.8% drop in 2003. Spending on Wi-Fi services in the US reached $21 mln in 2004 and the TIA expected this to increase to $45 mln in 2005 rising at 99.9% CAGR to us$335 mln by 2008. Spending on Wi-Fi equipment in the US in 2004 increased by 31.8% to $4.35 bln.

By 2008 the TIA expects spending on Wi-Fi infrastructure equipment to total $7 bln in 2008, a 12.6% compound annual increase. The TIA expects the number of Wi-Fi hotspots to rise from 32,800 this year to 64,200 in 2008, rising at 31.5% CAGR. The TIA said it expected spending on WiMAX infrastructure in the US to increase dramatically over the coming few years, growing 666.7% from $15 mln in 2004 to $115 mln in 2005, then rising further to $290 mln by 2008, growing at 109.7% CAGR.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/index.php?p=1079

“2004 was distinguished by a number of major epidemics caused by e-mail worms such as MyDoom, NetSky, Bagle, and Zafi,” said Alexander Gostev, a senior analyst with Moscow-based Kaspersky Labs, in a report he authored on the security situation for the first quarter of the year. “However, late 2004 and early 2005 were free of such outbreaks, with nothing on the scale of even the mid-sized outbreaks of 2004,” Gostev added.

The decline in destructive power of e-mailed worms may be due to anti-virus vendors developing new technologies to address them, including detecting worms in compressed .zip files and pre-scanning messages with executable attachments, but he also gave credit to Microsoft for patching several Outlook and Outlook Express vulnerabilities.

“The increased media focus on malicious code and security issues has resulted in end users being noticeably more cautious about opening e-mail attachments, especially those from unknown sources,” he noted. “They’ve been effectively displaced by network worms incorporating Trojan components,” he said.

Even though Microsoft has released a record number of patches in the first four months of 2005, “no new vulnerabilities as serious as the LSASS or RPC DCOM vulnerabilities have been detected in Windows so far this year,” said Gostev in his report.

Mass-mailed worms and vulnerabilities may be down, but phishing — as almost everyone knows — is on a rocket ride, and spyware is the security buzzword of the year so far. “Several billion dollars are currently invested in virtual worlds and role-playing games, a sum equivalent to the budget of a small country. Naturally, [that] hasn’t escaped the attention of cyber criminals.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/161501182

IM-Worms
Worms that propagate via Internet messaging services by sending URLs to all contacts in the local contact list. The URLs take incautious users to websites containing the body of the worm. This approach is also often used by email worms.

One of the most interesting developments in 2005 was the appearance of worms for instant messenger applications. Instant messenger applications have become very popular, but users rarely perceive them as potential infection vectors. The source code for some early IM-worms was also published on a number of virus writers’ sites, and most of the new worms are clearly based on this code. As P2P-worms were simple to create, and spread rapidly, several hundred families appeared, with numerous versions in each. Kaspersky Lab monitored P2P networks closely during the upsurge in P2P-worms and analysis showed that almost every second file in the Kazaa file-sharing network was a P2P-worm. Despite the fact that Internet messaging services allow file transfer, for some reason virus writers are not utilizing it as a method of infection, possibly because they find overly complex. The worm penetrates victim systems either by exploiting Internet Explorer vulnerabilities or simply by downloading and installing the malicious code. Monitoring incoming http traffic for malicious code (which should be part of any responsible security policy) will block those worms which penetrate via browser vulnerabilities.

Botnets
Initially, infected computers were linked via an IRC channel and received commands from the remote user via IRC, and this is still the most popular way of controlling botnets from a single central point and is used by the Agobot, Rbot and SdBot families, which are the most common malicious bots. Mydoom would open a single port in the range between 3127 and 3198 which gave anyone access to the infected system. The Internet was flooded with worms attempting to penetrate computers already infected by Mydoom. Virus writers also wrote scanners that allowed potential controllers to search computers for the Mydoom backdoor component: if the backdoor was detected, the new controller would drop and execute new malware on the infected machine. At the height of this outbreak, infected machines were passing from controller to controller several times a day. All of these infected machines are being actively used by cyber criminals as spamming platforms in order to make money. Botnets can also be used in DoS attacks and to spread new malware – such threats often lead site owners to pay cyber criminals not to attack their sites. Detection and prevention of botnets should be a priority for both the IT industry and end users, since the future of the Internet depends on coordinated action now.

Email Worms
2004 was distinguished by a number of major epidemics caused by email worms such as Mydoom, NetSky, Bagle and Zafi. However, late 2004 and early 2005 was free of such outbreaks, with nothing on the scale of even the mid-sized outbreaks of 2004.

Social engineering
I.e. techniques used by cybercriminals to trick end users into sharing confidential data, continues to evolve. According to data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, in January 2005 phishers sent 12,845 unique phishing letters leading to 2,560 spoofed websites. The public fear of spyware has also been exploited by Adware writers and other cyber -fraudsters to penetrate victim machines.

No new critical Windows vulnerabilities
Isolated attacks notwithstanding, the fact that older versions of Windows do not have critical vulnerabilities, and the encouraging trend of more and more Windows XP users installing Service Pack 2 gives hope for the future. The current lack of worldwide outbreaks can be partially acounted for by two important factors: no new serious vulnerabilites in Windows and the migration of users to Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

On the other hand, security holes in Internet Explorer are responsible for a significant number of infections. Kaspersky Lab data shows that the MHTML URL Processing Vulnerability (CAN-2004-0380) is the loophole currently most frequently exploited by virus writers. This vulnerability makes it possible to hide executable files written in VBS or JS in CHM files (Microsoft Compiled Help) and post links to the infected files on the Internet. When an infected CHM file is opened, the hidden files are executed in the Local Internet Zone with current user rights.These scripts are usually Trojan Downloaders or Droppers that install other Trojans on the victim machines. However, this vulnerability is not new and Microsoft issued the MS04-013 patch for it over a year ago on April 13, 2004, meaning that users do have the ability to protect themselves against such attacks.

On-line games: a new arena
Contemporary cyber criminals don’t only steal banking and financial details. Games have achieved enormous popularity since their first appearance, and individual items and/or characters in various on-line games are sold for tens of thousands of dollars in on-line auctions. For instance, a virtual island from “Project Entropia” was sold, for $26,500, the largest amount spent at any one time in online-gaming history. In short, several billion dollars are currently invested in virtual worlds and role-playing games, a sum equivalent to the budget of a small country. Naturally, the presence of real money in on-line games hasn’t escaped the attention of cyber criminals.

The first cybercrime targeting on-line games was committed in early 2003, when Trojans designed to steal user account data to the Asian game Legend of Mir were detected. And two years on, there are more than 700 known malicious programs which target Legend of Mir. Detailed analysis of these programs shows that most of them originate in South Korea and China. The first Trojans attacking Lineage were detected by Kaspersky Lab virus analysts in October 2004; in less than six months the number of such malicious programs has grown to several hundred.

Among the most recent programs targeting online games is a family of Trojans designed to steal personal information from Gamania players. The first one was detected in February 2005 and since then there has been at least one new variant every week. Admnistrators immediately forward any viruses, scripts and Trojans attacking the game portals, and Kaspersky Lab ensures that updates protecting against such threats are released almost immediately.

Adware, spyware and viruses: is there a difference?
Adware and spyware are the IT buzzwords of the moment. Such programs may exhibit Trojan behaviour in how they install themselves, (for instance by exploiting browser vulnerabilities), or in how they behave once they are installed. With adware becoming increasingly inseparable from classic malware, dedicated anti-adware solutions will simply cease to provide adequate protection.

Mobile malware
The first malicious code targeting mobile phones (Cabir) was detected in the middle of June. We are now staring into the abyss: a Warhol Worm, which attacks all possible systems in the shortest possible time, is now a very real possiblity. The first attempt to create such a worm surfaced in March this year. Fortunately, ComWar, an MMS-worm, contained a number of errors and there was a significant time lag during propagation.

At the time of writing, no further Bluetooth-worms have been detected.

http://www.viruslist.com/en/analysis?pubid=162454316