The Network Security. Org

The Honeynet Project has released a new freebie honeypot client tool that lets security pros and researchers automatically detect and dissect bot infections and other malware attacks on client machines.

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The rapid evolution of “Web 2.0” has sparked the convergence of social networking on a massive scale and the adoption of new combinations of technologies that significantly increase the so-called ‘attack-surface’. This combination offers irresistible opportunities to organised crime.

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The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has attracted renewed interest lately, but not in a good way: The bad guys are now using the ‘70s disco-era file transfer technology to serve up bot malware, and even as a backdoor into some enterprises that neglect to lock down their FTP servers.

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Miscreants have created a strain of malware capable of removing rootkits from compromised PCs, only to install almost undetectable backdoor code of its own. The Pandex Trojan stops previously installed rootkits from working by removing their hooks into system calls.

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Even as social networking darling Facebook prepares a version of its online networking application aimed specifically at enterprise users, legions of security experts are getting behind the idea that the sites represent a serious threat to businesses and other organizations.

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Security analysts use stealth to win the "arms race" against malware. Getting around the defense mechanisms that malware writers erect isn’t easy. From packers to run-time obfuscators, software-armoring techniques create problems for reverse engineers and security analysts.

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No matter how you measure it, malware is proliferating at unprecedented levels. Last month, PandaLabs and AV-Test each joined the lists of vendors and researchers reporting massive malware growth in 2007. PandaLabs says it now receives an average of over 3,000 new strains of malware every day. AV-Test saw an increase from 973,000 unique malware [...]

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Computer users are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the Mac’s ability to sustain its mostly malware-free existence. Sophos, a computer security company, surveyed 355 computer users, asking them whether they believed Apple’s Macintosh computers will be targeted more frequently by malware in the future.

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The number of malware code samples in the wild grew 30% to 410,000 in 2007, according to security researchers at IBM’s ISS division. The Storm Worm, in particular, accounted for 13% of the entire malware collection.

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In the first column of this year, I discussed computer security outlook and hopes for 2008. I forecast more of the same that we saw in 2007: more spam, more malware, more bad guys basically owning the Internet and our connected computers. I don’t see any trends or new leaders with significant power to change [...]

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