Cybercrime Trends for 2010 – 2010 Mid-Year Report from SonicWALL
SonicWALL has released its mid-year ‘top cybercrime trends for 2010’ report which details the current and future security threats faced by organizations the world over.
The report, compiled from the data collected by the company’s Global Response Intelligence Defense (GRID) network servers, suggests that trends in social networking, cloud computing and remote use of smartphones pose a major threat to organizations.
According to the report, the number of malware attacks detected by the GRID from January 1, 2010 to June 30, 2010 have increased three-fold from 60 million to a whooping 180 million. A rise in intrusion attacks, which include injection of malicious SQL code, DNS and HTML attacks, has also been detected. Organizations have also been receiving an overwhelming number of phishing emails that are responsible for a significant number of malware downloads and intrusion attacks. The company also highlights the epidemic of fake anti-virus software laced with malware.
SonicWALL has emphasized that companies needed to control access to social media platforms on its computer systems by employees. The report points out that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and Google Groups, were being used by hackers to trick unsuspecting users into downloading malware. SonicWALL informed about certain messages being sent on Facebook that redirect users to a photo album and prompt them to download a file that contains malware. The company also discovered trends in fake Twitter accounts being used to send huge amounts of spam.
With the rise of cloud computing technology in the enterprise IT market, attacks on companies that have deployed virtualized and cloud based environments, have increased significantly over the past year. Hackers have been exploiting companies utilizing Web based applications used to store sensitive financial, employee, corporate and medical information, targeting them with Web based intrusion attacks.
SonicWALL predicts that within the next 12 months, new threats based on Apple’s Mac platform and iOS based devices like iPhone and iPod, will emerge. It also warned that companies should prepare themselves against threats from malicious mobile and VoIP based applications.