Market seeing 'increasing tide of malware'

2009-09-11

There is an "increasing tide of malware" in the market at the current time and many people are falling for it, it has been suggested.

Much of what cybercriminals are now doing is unique and they are being very creative in their efforts, commented Con Mallon, EMEA product marketing director for Symantec in the UK.

Server side polymorphism is also a current problem, Mr Mallon noted, explaining that this is when a web server has the ability to create a unique form of malware for every browser session which is happening on that site.

"When you look at the bad stuff that is getting onto people's PCs and compromising them, you find it's been brought onto the users' PCs by the users themselves. Sites say run this browser or install this program, so that stuff comes into the machines. So therefore that load mechanism is the next point of weakness in the whole security story," he said.

His comments come after Symantec claimed it blocked more than 250 million malicious code attacks across the world each month during 2008 on average. It pointed out a number of common techniques that have been used by cybercriminals, including phony emails, fake websites and online ads.

It has used a new technology named Quorum to help detects threats as they come about. The technology tracks attributes of a file or application, including its age and download source, so that it can establish its reputation. Reputation is particularly important when the file is new and therefore likely to be a threat.

A recent report from PandaLabs indicated that malware is on the rise. It showed that the number of computers infected by malware designed to steal confidential, personal or banking data had risen by 600 per cent in comparison to last year. An average of 37,000 new viruses, worms, Trojans and other security threats appear every day, the report claimed.

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