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Summer’s warmer temperatures are upon us, but don’t expect cyber crooks to take any vacation.
In fact, security specialists say scammers and spammers are heating up Internet traffic with some new tactics that enable them to launch attacks undetected by most service providers and corporate Web filters.
Here are a sampling of some of the most recent strategies and assaults uncovered by experts we spoke to.
Targeted attacks
Small is beautiful. Spam artists are shunning large scale e-mail blasts in favour of targeted strikes.
Companies in the U.S. are still abuzz about a spoofed e-mail purporting to come from the Better Business Bureau (BBB) that was sent primarily to c-level executives of several corporations a couple of weeks ago.
The message actually contained malicious code that infected a victim’s machine with a keystroke logger. The code records the keystrokes typed by the user when carrying out such functions as Web-based financial transactions.
The BBB scam illustrates a growing trend towards smaller attacks to “fly under the radar” of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), according to Sam Masiello, director or MX Logic Inc, an Englewood, Col.-based Web security firm.
In the past, spam operators “cast a wide net” to entrap a many victims as possible. The downside of this tactic is that ISPs immediately recognize an attack is underway because the large traffic volume is often a dead giveaway, Masiello said.
By contrast, the BBB scam message was directed only to top-tier executives and even had the company name of the target firm in the body of the letter.
“This doesn’t mean blast e-mail is dead. It only means we’ll see more localized attacks from now on.” Masiello said.
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