Information Security Conference To Discuss Rise In Targeted Cyber Attacks

By Author: Ec Council
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According to Symantec’s February 2011 MessageLabs Intelligence report, there has been a significant increase in the number of collaborative attacks that make use of well-timed and carefully crafted targeted techniques.

As February began, the attacks increased in number and multiple malware families were used aggressively to conduct simultaneous attacks via propagation techniques, signaling the likelihood of a common origin for these infected emails.

Interestingly, Symantec notes that the malicious code used in the different waves of attack also shared some common techniques.

For example, one day would be dedicated to propagating mainly Zeus (aka. Zbot) variants, while another day was dedicated to distributing SpyEye variants. Not long ago, when SpyEye was installed, it sometimes contained a “Kill Zeus” capability. Interestingly, the two sides seem to have changed course. Towards the end of October 2010, the bot code developers of SpyEye and Zeus bots showed signs of a merger as reported by Brian Krebs. By February 10, these attacks had multiplied further and were being propagated simultaneously ...
... with each malware family using its own polymorphic packer to further evade traditional antivirus detection.

Information security attacks are predicted to worsen and it is necessary for information security professionals to understand the latest threat methodologies. EC-Council provides a platform for information security professionals to discuss and exchange ideas on information security training solutions. EC-Council’s Information Security Conference, officially named “Hacker Halted” is also dubbed the Hacker Conference.