Covering the period from Jan. 1 through June 30, the Symantec report details a wide variety of vulnerabilities and threats observed by Symantec researchers in that time, including trends in the spread of malicious code, phishing techniques and spam-based attacks.
According to the report, Symantec researchers cataloged an increase in the sale of sophisticated toolkits like “MPack,” a professionally developed toolkit first reported by Symantec in May, and which was sold in underground fashion online.
“Once purchased, attackers could deploy MPack’s collection of software components to install malicious code on thousands of computers around the world and then monitor the success of the attack through various metrics on its online, password protected control and management console,” Symantec reported, adding that the distribution of the toolkit exemplified the sort of coordinated attack involving a combination of malicious activity that has been on the rise of late.
Over the course of its last several threat reports, Symantec has observed a “significant shift in attackers motivated from fame to fortune,” said Arthur Wong, senior vice president of security response and managed services for Symantec.
“The Internet threats and malicious activity we are currently tracking demonstrate that hackers are taking this trend to the next level by making cybercrime their actual profession, and they are employing business-like practices to successfully accomplish this goal,” Wong said.
Another sign of the increased sophistication of cyber criminals is their increased targeting of some of the world’s highest profile companies and organizations, Symantec researchers said in the report.
Four percent of all malicious activity detected by Symantec in the most recent reporting period originated from the IP address space of Fortune 100 companies, according to the report. Symantec’s researchers said that hackers might target these high-profile companies for any number of reasons, including that such an exploit could facilitate further attacks on customers and partners of the originally targeted company.
“By initially targeting well-known companies such as these, attackers are targeting victims indirectly by first exploiting trusted entities and then using their position on the network of the trusted company to attack the real victims,” Symantec stated in its report. “[A] single compromised computer within such an organization could allow an attacker to gain access to other computers within the organization. This could allow the attacker to harvest various types of information, including the organization’s customer database, financial activities of the organization, and proprietary technology or software, to name a few.”
For more information, see the full text of Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report.