India: Cyber crime hub?
By Sumir Singh

Symantec is a global leader in internet security with its products being used by tens of millions of people and businesses.  Symantec has just released its Internet Security Threat Report which covers Jan – Dec, 2009.

According to Symantec, there was no slowdown in cyber attacks during the global recession.  Its software was blocking an average of 100 potential attacks per second in 2009. The year was bookended by two very prominent Cyber attacks – Conficker in the opening months of the year and Hydraq at the very end of 2009.

Notable trends highlighted in this year’s report include the fact that India is a now a hub for such criminal activity

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An increase in the number of targeted threats focused on enterprises. Given the potential for monetary gain from compromised corporate intellectual property (IP), cybercriminals have turned their attention toward enterprises. The report found that attackers are leveraging the abundance of personal information openly available on social networking sites to synthesize socially engineered attacks on key individuals within targeted companies.

Attack toolkits make cybercrime easier than ever. Cybercrime attack toolkits have lowered the bar to entry for new cybercriminals, making it easy for unskilled attackers to compromise computers and steal information. One such toolkit called Zeus (Zbot), which can be purchased for as little as $700, automates the process of creating customized malware capable of stealing personal information.

Web-based attacks continued to grow unabated. Today’s attackers leverage social engineering techniques to lure unsuspecting users to malicious websites. These websites then attack the victim’s Web browser and vulnerable plug-ins normally used to view video or document files. In particular, 2009 saw dramatic growth in the number of Web-based attacks targeted at PDF viewers; this accounted for 49 percent of observed Web-based attacks. This is a sizeable increase from the 11 percent reported in 2008.

Malicious activity takes root in emerging countries. The report saw firm signs that malicious activity is now taking root in countries with an emerging broadband infrastructure, such as Brazil, India, Poland, Vietnam and Russia. In 2009, these countries moved up the rankings as a source and target of malicious activity by cybercriminals. The findings from the report suggest that government crackdowns in developed countries have led cybercriminals to launch their attacks from the developing world, where they are less likely to be prosecuted.

Malicious code is more rampant than ever. In 2009, Symantec identified more than 240 million distinct new malicious programs, a 100 percent increase over 2008.

Top threats - The Sality.AE virus, the Brisv Trojan and the SillyFDC worm were the threats most frequently blocked by Symantec security software in 2009.

Downadup (Conficker) still very prevalent. It was estimated that Downadup was on more than 6.5 million PCs worldwide at the end of 2009. Thus far, machines still infected with Downadup/Conficker have not been utilized for any significant criminal activity, but the threat remains a viable one.

Compromised identity information continues to grow. Sixty percent of all data breaches that exposed identities were the result of hacking. In a sign that this issue is not limited to a few larger enterprises, the Symantec State of Enterprise Security Report 2010 reported that 75 percent of enterprises surveyed experienced some form of cyber attack in 2009.

Another turbulent year for spam. In 2009, spam made up 88 percent of all e-mail observed by Symantec, with a high of 90.4 percent in May and a low of 73.7 percent in February. Of the 107 billion spam messages distributed globally per day on average, 85 percent were from botnets. The 10 major bot networks, including Cutwail, Rustock and Mega-D now control at least 5 million compromised computers. Throughout 2009, Symantec saw botnet infected computers being advertised in the underground economy for as little as 3 cents per computer.

Applying security patches continues to be a challenge for many users. The report found that maintaining a secure, patched system became more challenging than ever in 2009. Moreover, many users are failing to patch even very old vulnerabilities. For example, the Microsoft Internet Explorer ADODB.Stream Object File Installation Weakness was published on August 23, 2003, and fixes have been available since July 2, 2004, yet it was the second-most attacked Web-based vulnerability in 2009.
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