Attack kits driving malware expansion
By Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 19 January 2011 14:50
Business IT –
Security
Has the availability of increasingly sophisticated attack kits contributed to the malware problem? Symantec thinks so.
Forrester: boost earnings by $220,643
Data loss prevention whitepapers dowload
Symantec has released a new report explaining the role of attack kits in the malware economy. According to the company, they make it relatively easy for people with little or no programming expertise to launch successful attacks, for example to extract information from compromised computers, or to set up a botnet that can be used to launch DDoS attacks or to send large volumes of spam.
Company officials say practices in the underground industry reflect those of the legitimate sector in terms of specialisation (one player has the ability to write exploits, another has a mechanism in place to spam out links to web pages containing malicious code, another is expert in using SEO to attract traffic to those pages, and so on), outsourcing, and business models (support, upgrades, pay-by-use, etc).
“The [malware] industry has matured,” Peter Sparkes, managed services senior manager at Symantec, told iTWire, explaining that it is possible to make plenty of money from developing and supporting attack kits without having to get your hands dirty by actually launching the attacks themselves.
Apart from the market in botnets (a shady type might rent one for a few days to spew out a massive quantity of spam, for instance, and Symantec officials note that around 85% of all spam was generated by botnets in 2009), “personal information is sellable,” as is the intellectual property of even small businesses, said Mr Sparkes.
Interestingly, Symantec has observed a correlation between the frequency of attacks and the release of new versions of attack kits. Furthermore, over 60% of web-based threat activity can be traced to the known attack kits. Symantec thinks a significant amount of generic threats are due to these kits.
CONTINUED
Article source: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/security/44477-attack-kits-driving-malware-expansion
Category: Virus/Malware