SonicWALL released its 2010 end-of-year summary of cyber-security intelligence today, revealing global trends in malicious network activity and application usage across its customer base.
SonicWALL’s data, collected from over 30 countries worldwide, showed spikes in vulnerabilities on Mondays and Tuesdays, points to seasonal trends in threats associated with specific types of malware, with the most active time for threat-related traffic in the United States being between the hours of 10:00 AM. and 11:00 AM PST.
Other findings and trends in malicious network traffic include:
• China and Taiwan top the list as the most heavily hit countries for worldwide threat-related traffic. Taiwan, New Zealand and South Africa are the countries most heavily hit with malware. The Netherlands, China and Taiwan lead the list for the most heavily hit countries with intrusion-related threats and multimedia threats.
• Top malware threats prevalent during 2010 were Conficker worm, Bredolab Trojans, Zeus Bots, SpyEye Bots, FakeAV Trojans, Oficla Trojans, as well as malwares and Web exploit kits such as Gumblar and Phoenix.
• Trojans peak in September and December, corresponding with the proliferation of back-to-school offers and holiday greeting cards
• Worms spike in December, correlating with the winter holidays
• Adware threats peak in September, October and December, correlating to more ads offered up from online advertisers trying to reach a more receptive online audience
Phishing fraud and website spoofing continue to be serious problems. As online transactions continue to grow, the number of emails soliciting people to go to bogus websites, too. Consumers entering personal data on falsified Web pages risk having their identity stolen, their finances hijacked or their computers downloading unwanted and malicious software.
Data for the summary was collected throughout 2010 from the SonicWALL Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) Network which consists of millions of SonicWALL anti-spam and email security sensors located worldwide.
“These findings give IT administrators insight how to best prepare their networks for the upcoming year,” said Boris Yanovsky, vice president of software engineering at SonicWALL. “With increasing proliferation of web security threats, signatures can’t keep up – heuristics, algorithms and behavioral analysis are needed to supplement signatures with proactive analysis. In addition to new social media threats, malware threats and the proliferation of fake AV software telling people that their computers are infected, IT also needs to think through security strategies for attacks focused on the Mac computer and mobile devices in 2011.”
Related Reading – Technology Trends in 2011 – From Disruptive to Productive
Free Research Report – Mobile & Smart Device Security Survey 2010
