Tag: research
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Phishing on rise, but anti-phishers fighting back
As UK banking body reports major increase in phishes, PayPal unveils blocking strategy. A report from the UK payments industry association APACS has shown a dramatic increase in phishing incidents, with the number of reports for Q1 of 2008 up 200% on the same period last year. Meanwhile major phishing target PayPal , the online…
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Microsoft research revives ‘friendly worm’ ideas
Malware techniques proposed as update-spreading method. A group of Microsoft researchers have put forward proposals to use worm techniques to spread patches and updates across networks, reopening an age-old debate on the possibility of ‘beneficial malware’. The research, to be presented at the INFOCOM conference in April by a team from Microsoft ‘s Cambridge, UK,…
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Malcode from Mexico and Africa predicted to boom
Developing world expected to contribute heavily to future cybercrime. A report from F-Secure has predicted increasing levels of malware creation and operation in ‘developing’ countries, as internet use and IT competence levels continue to outpace employment opportunities. While the US, Europe and Japan dominated malware development in the 1990s, and China, Russia and Brazil have…
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Survey finds 75% lose trust in data-loss firms
Security breaches seriously undermining public respect. A survey carried out jointly by security company Check Point and research firm YouGov has found public reaction to data security breaches is overwhelmingly negative. 75% of respondents to the survey said they would not trust a firm that had suffered a data theft or leakage, while 79% would…
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Microsoft unveils January-June threat report
Security analysis shows rise in vulnerabilities, trojans and scamware. Microsoft has released its latest ‘Security Intelligence Report’, covering the first half of 2007, showing a steady increase in reports of software vulnerabilities, ‘potentially unwanted’ applications and trojan activity. The study found vulnerabilities continuing in an upward trend lasting since 2003, with high-severity flaws rising most…
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US users overestimating PC security
Survey finds people are less protected than they think. A joint study carried out by McAfee and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has found that many US consumers wrongly assume their computers are safe from malware and infiltration. Computer users were questioned about security software running on their home machines, and their answers compared…
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Cybercrime rivals real-world crime rates
Researchers estimate 3 million online crimes committed in UK last year. A research group has issued a report estimating levels of cybercrime in the UK during 2006, finding that an online crime occurs every 10 seconds on average, with over 3 million separate incidents thought to have taken place over the year. Several types of…
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AVK tops latest AV-Test charts
Top four beat 99% in large collection scan. Testers at AV-Test.org have run 29 products over a massive collection of malware samples, with detection rates measured against 874,822 items including worms, trojans, bots and backdoors. The top two were multi-engine products, with GDATA ‘s AntiVirusKit ranked number one with 99.88% detection, and the Webwasher gateway…