HELSINKI, Finland — Cyber-crooks were ever more prolific this year, sharply increasing the number of attacks and their sophistication, according to a leading international Internet security firm.
Twice as many new malware attacks were detected in 2007 than the year before, totaling about a half million, "indicating that network criminals are producing new malware variants in bulk," said security expert F-Secure Corp.
In fact, the company says, the amount of attacks reported in 2007 equaled the previous 20 years combined.
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"We've never seen as many samples arrive to our labs," said Mikko Hypponen, F-Secure's chief research officer. "We would be unable to handle such huge sample loads if we would not have built a high degree of automation into our malware analysis systems over the past years."
Hypponen says the attacks this year were not particularly new in nature but were refined and adapted to be more effective, and that financial transactions remained the favorite target.
Social engineering techniques also remained in favor, and as consumers have become more alert to such phishing attacks, for instance, criminals have started employing more sophisticated techniques.
"One example of this is banking Trojans that use methods such as injecting themselves directly into the browser application, known as man-in-the-browser attacks," F-Secure says.
Large databases of personal data also were a popular target in the past year, especially those containing credit card and banking account information.
F-Secure predicts that malware will continue to increase in volume in 2008, increasing the strain on those sworn to fight it.
"The criminals are successfully creating a network-based underground ecosystem, trading malware development tools, skills, capabilities and resources ever more effectively," the company says.
"At the same time the reach of the law enforcement agencies remain limited in the global network domain. 2008 will be a challenge of endurance."
F-Secure's full 2007 wrap-up is available online at http://www.f-secure.com/2007/2/.
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