Attacks On IM And Chinese Malware On The Rise

There is a 7% increase in malicious software on Instant Messaging or IM networks every quarter. Also, hackers scrutinize IM networks specific to industry. During the previous quarter, malware targeting instant messaging networks increased 6%. A research by IT security company FaceTime Communications recorded five such cases each day.

According to a security report by Sophos, with continuous increase in malware over the previous months, China is a leading nation in generating malware. The security firm said that China generates 35.6% of malware. Tgdaily published this on March 2, 2007.

The growth of malware in China is particularly concerning. In the nations' malware race, China leads in infecting PCs with bots, the larger number of which are remotely controlled from United States. The U.S. also has the largest number of spam distributing bots.

Over the last four months, Chinese malware has steadily grown. Off and on, there has been an odd increase and something new appeared almost every single day, said Chris Boyd, malware Research director at FaceTime.

He said a recent Trojan called Symfly may have meddled with web traffic for many Chinese websites and that shows the hackers were appropriating money from illegal installations. Earlier security professionals did not encounter Chinese infection other than basic and crude kinds of attacks. This Trojan was a new area Chris continued to say. Itpro published this on April 5, 2007.

According to earlier belief most fraudsters were located in the U.S. Most commonly they targeted auction sites and engaged via e-mail for committing fraud. About three-quarters of fraudulent attacks arrived through spam or phishing e-mails against attacks directly from malware-loaded websites. Virusbtn published this during the fourth week of March 2007.

The majority of IM-based attacks were on IM networks like MSN, AOL and Yahoo meant for public use. On the other hand, industry-specific networks like Reuters and semi-private Jabber based network increasingly faced hackers' attacks. 17% of assaults concentrated on the latter networks during the early months of 2007.

The FaceTime research said spring and autumn were the peak times for attacks on IM networks and they would continue to grow before subsiding in summer.

Related article: Attack On Baidu.Com Using Syn Flooding

» SPAMfighter News - 4/12/2007