Trojans, botnets, phishing oh my! Whats next? 08212012

As things progressed we developed names for types of viruses as fast as the creators could write them, like worms, malware, bot, botnet and phishing attacks.  The latest groups have names like Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame, and Gauss.  Now the latest to be identified is the Shamoon, this last group have specific goals mind and according to an article in Computerworld fly under the radar.   

In an article “Sinister new breed of malware growing” by David Jeffers he points out that in the early years the reason behind viruses was to prove it could be done and become newsworthy. 

Now malware is an industry, with the goal to capture information that can be used to access credit cards, bank accounts and other personal information.  Some of these new attacks targeted very targeted, unlike the ones in the past that just caused damage everywhere.  The author points out this targeting is “Good News” because they are attacking identified targets and not necessarily everything in its path. 

Unfortunately I do not agree completely with this idea, I think that targeting will go from this type of targeting, to a more notorious like we can identify and attack everyone that uses this portal.  If this becomes the case they can target say users of a specific bank.

David does suggest the best defense still is to Apply all patches, ensure security is up to date.