Assessing the state of malware and cybercrime
Malware and criminal activities on the Internet have reached a very serious level. So serious that some are saying that the usefulness of the Internet has been badly impaired. Exactly what is the situation? What can be done about it? An academic study that looks at these questions is from David Dittrich. Dittrich is a security researcher in the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and he has written a paper, Malware to crimeware: how far have they gone, and how do we catch up? The paper begins:
I have surveyed over a decade of advances in delivery of malware. Over this period, attackers have shifted to using complex, multi-phase attacks based on subtle social engineering tactics, advanced cryptographic techniques to defeat takeover and analysis, and highly targeted attacks that are intended to fly below the radar of current technical defenses. I will show how malicious technology combined with social manipulation is used against us and conclude that this understanding might even help us design our own combination of technical and social mechanisms to better protect us.
Via Bruce Schneier.
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