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Attacks on Web Applications Up, Symantec Says in 'Threat Report'
by Alex Woodie
Symantec unveiled its bi-annual "Internet Security Threat Report" this week, and as you might expect, the state of security on the Web weaken during the second-half of 2004. Phishing attacks, attacks against corporate Web applications, and the prevalence of Windows-based viruses and worms grew considerably from July 2004, but somewhat surprisingly, more vulnerabilities were reported for the Mozilla Web browsers than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, widely regarded the bane of online security.
The problem of phishing, or tricking people into entering their confidential information into fraudulent Web page cleverly designed to look like that of their trusted service provider, has been well documented over the past year or so, and Symantec's accounting of the scope of the problem reflects, more or less, what you might expect. The security provider's Brightmail unit reported a 366 percent increase in the number of phishing attempts, from 9 million per week in July 2004 to 33 million by December 2004. This problem will continue to get worse before it gets better.
While social engineering techniques (a hacker's clever manipulation of the natural human tendency to trust) will always work, to some extent, and are impossible to prevent entirely, today's Web-based criminals are also finding success going straight to the source and infiltrating companies' Web applications directly. These Web applications are not protected by the corporate firewall (although hopefully their databases are), and "are a serious security concern because they may allow attackers access to confidential information without having to compromise individual servers," Symantec says.
The Cupertino, California, security software giant is tracking this Web application infiltration problem as a percentage of all reported software vulnerabilities. From the beginning of July to the end of December 2004, about 48 percent of all vulnerabilities reported were Web application vulnerabilities, up considerably from the 39 percent share of the total number of vulnerabilities Web applications had for the previous six-month period, Symantec says.
What's more, attackers are increasingly employing viruses and Trojan horses to help them steal confidential information. Of the top 50 samples of malicious code that Symantec captured between July and December, 54 percent of them were intended to help attackers expose confidential information, a number that risen steadily during the last 18 months. During the January through June 2004 reporting period, this number was 44 percent, while 33 percent of the most circulated nasties from July through December 2003 were of the confidential-information-stealing kind.
These multi-pronged attacks pose a serious threat to both corporations and individuals, says Arthur Wong, a vice president with Symantec's security response and managed security services business. "Attackers are launching increasingly sophisticated attacks in an effort to compromise the integrity of corporate and personal information," he says.
Windows Security: Not All Bad
According to Symantec's report, Microsoft Windows continues to lead all other operating systems in terms of the sheer number of viruses and worms written to infect it. Windows is also the platform of choice for other kinds of attacks. While the news is mostly bad for Windows security, it's not completely bad.
Symantec documented more than 7,360 new Windows 32 virus and worm variants during the six month period that ended in December. This represents an increase of 64 percent over the previous six-month period, and puts the total number of Windows 32 threats and their variants at close to 17,500.
What's more, the "Slammer" attack, more formally known as the Microsoft SQL Server Resolution Service Stack Overflow Attack, continues to be the most common avenue of attack for hackers, with a 22 percent share of this dubious category, Symantec says. The second most common attack was the TCP SYN Flood Denial of Service Attack with a 12 percent share.
About 1,400 new vulnerabilities were discovered across all platforms during Symantec's reporting period, or about 54 per week. And these aren't just small problems that can be exploited by only the most sophisticated hackers. About 97 percent of these vulnerabilities were either moderately or highly severe, and 70 percent of them were considered easy to exploit, Symantec says.
Now the good news for Microsoft: Internet Explorer was not the Web browser with the highest number of new vulnerabilities over the last six months of 2004! While IE is undoubtedly the browser that's been compromised the most (because it owns more than 90 percent of the browser market), Mozilla's Web browsers, which include the Mozilla and Firefox browsers, had the highest number of new vulnerabilities during the last six months of 2004, with 21 vulnerabilities. IE, by contrast, had 13 new vulnerabilities, while Opera Software's Web browser suffered just six.
To read the entire Symantec "Internet Security Threat Report" issued March 21, 2005, click here.
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