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Malicious Activity Grew At a Record Pace In 2008
An anonymous reader writes "Symantec announced that malicious code activity continued to grow at a record pace throughout 2008, primarily targeting confidential information of computer users. According to the company's Internet Security Threat Report Volume XIV (PDF), Symantec created more than 1.6 million new malicious code signatures in 2008. This equates to more than 60 percent of the total malicious code signatures ever created by Symantec — a response to the rapidly increasing volume and proliferation of new malicious code threats. These signatures helped Symantec block an average of more than 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe each month during 2008."
Another anonymous reader notes a related report from Verizon (PDF), which says 285 million records were compromised in 2008, more than the total of the previous four years combined.
Wow! First McAfee found out through objective research that spam ruins the environment and now Symantec has an unbiased report showing malicious activity is on the rise!
... "Mortal Kombat: The Game Info" perhaps?
I can not wait for Richard Stallman's report on commercial closed source software costing a record high price in 2008. I mean assuming he comes to that conclusion, of course.
I would just like to point out that the URL for that PDF report indicates it is stored in a directory named 'mktginfo.' I wonder what that stands for
My work here is dung.
Security implementations constantly lag behind the times. Even the pentagon does more reactive rather than proactive implementations. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/08/2246248 Even if this were to change, it would more likely just cause an escalation of the issue. Even as security gets more complex, so too will the hackers, especially those funded or controlled by organized crime. Your best bet is to use robust security, and never, ever assume that the Internet, or any network, is a safe place.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
If code that screws up your computer and resists deinstalling is defined as malicious, then the Symantec and McAfee suites must account for at least half of the malicious code being written.
The reason is simple, people aren't even getting a slap on the wrist.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
But the summary specifically mentions that a lot of this code targetted users' personal info - which in your example would still be accessible.
This is exactly what I want to protect myself against. If the OS gets crippled or broken, I can fix that, but if they delete or worse, steal, my data, thats dangerous. Backups will protect against data being deleted but how do you prevent your personal data from being stolen?
And no, putting all my data in a location where even I cant access it is not a solution.
Most decent firewalls now will filter which applications are allowed to access the internet and warn you when any application not in its list tries to. Its not the perfect solution but definitely more secure than turning a blind eye.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.