SoftScan Cautions for Safe Online Lifestyle

SoftScan warned users on January 17, 2008 to secure their lifestyle on the Internet in 2008 by not just focusing on use of gaming and social networking sites, but all other areas of Internet services like shopping, bill payments, and stock trading.

With criminals enhancing their tactics to yield more response and higher turnover, users can expect to find high levels of targeted spam aimed specifically at the recipient. Spam volume distributed during the first six months of 2008 is likely to decline, but they would rise again in the later part of the year.

Chief Technology Officer, Diego d'Ambra, at SoftScan, said in a statement that social engineering approach would continue to be preferred to lure users into surrendering password information or infecting their PC, but the methods would be far more sophisticated. Vnunet published d'Ambra's statement on January 18, 2008.

According to SoftScan, the vast amount of information needed to create social engineering messages would be gathered unlawfully from services offered on the Internet that hold financial and personal data to be subsequently exploited. Apart from this, phishing attacks too would largely hit users. Links would redirect them to secure fake websites that include the padlock icon and which enable criminals to further damage users' surfing habits by making them falsely feel that they are secure.

Frequently visited websites that contain content and harmful links from a wide range of irrelevant parties would also top malware writers' list. Earlier, already there had been attacks in which providers of advertising content have erroneously installed malware through infected adverts; alternatively, the advert directly leads the surfer to a corrupt website. SoftScan thinks such kinds of threat would be boosted further during 2008.

In addition, botnets would be an important player in disseminating spam and for waging other kinds of attack, said d'Ambra. The success of the botnet business could even inspire other people and criminals might develop malware to mine one another's bots, he said.

Further, SoftScan expects that old tricks would be galore in 2008 using themes of the European Soccer Championship, the Olympics and the US Presidential election in malware e-mails.

» SPAMfighter News - 1/31/2008