McAfee Avert Labs has released an updated TOP 10 security threats for 2007. It appears that well-known security concerns like phishing, spam, bots and rootkits are on the rise. Part 1
1. Password-stealing web sites are on the rise. There is an exponential growth in phishing sites. In total, the first three months of this year saw a 784 percent increase—with no slowdown in sight. There is also a possible increase in the abuse of open-content sites, such as Google and Wiki pages. Google accounts can be used to host drop boxes (via Gmail) or phishing sites (Google Docs). Even Internet archive sites will suffer.
2. Spam, particularly image spam, is on the increase. The total volume of trap-based spam has stayed fairly flat during the first part of the year. Image spam accounted for to 65 percent of all spam at the beginning of the year and has now declined a bit. Image spam, which has messages embedded in images rather than text (typically pump-and-dump stocks, pharmacy, and degree spam), is still a force to be reckoned with. It hovers between 30 percent to 50 percent of all spam that tries to find its way into users’ inboxes.
3. The popularity of video on the web makes it a target for hackers. There’s no doubt that hackers are riding the wave of online video available on hugely popular social networking sites like YouTube and MySpace. Astute social engineering— coupled with video’s inherently easy-to-program format—has enabled cybercriminals to come up with a variety of clever tricks.
MySpace has also been the target of phishing scams. After gathering MySpace user credentials from phishing sites, spammers log in to accounts and then post spam messages on other accounts. It’s an issue because MySpace can’t close down legitimate user accounts.
4. Mobile phone attacks will become more prevalent. Surprisingly, mobile malware numbers are down for the first quarter of 2007 (12 attacks), compared to the first quarter of 2006 (47).
5. Adware will go mainstream. Because adware has gotten such a bad rap, businesses are experimenting with more creative ways to deliver ads on the Internet. BitTorrent is setting a trend by offering free ad-supported downloads rather than paid downloads for its online TV network, so customers see ads before and after watching an episode or a movie—much like traditional television.
