Michael Sentonas, McAfee summarizes Security Round up 2011
Michael Sentonas, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer- APAC, McAfee summarises notable highlights of 2011 from the information security landscape.
2011 saw a rising tide of hacktivism among people who wanted their voices to be heard or who wished to attack the reputations of businesses and other organisations. In addition to defacement (the primary activity of hacktivists) and distributed denial of service, these attackers utilised social media for newer sophisticated attacks.
McAfee Labs saw marked increase in malware sophistication and targeting as well as a continued increase in the overall volume of daily malware threats throughout the year. As reported in our latest threat report, we expect to count almost 75 million unique malware samples by year's end. We noted some significant increases this year in stealth malware techniques, often referred to as rootkits. The botnet trajectory saw crests and troughs throughout the year wherein India saw a spike amongst new botnet senders in the months of May, June and July of 2011.
As recorded in our Q3 report, Mobile malware growth in 2011 was on target to exceed last year's and become the busiest year in mobile malware's short, but interesting, history. From a security perspective, cybercriminals currently have a window of opportunity to exploit a variety of mobile platforms. Notable mobile malware detections made this year included the Android/Wapaxy, Android/LoveTrp, and Android/HippoSMS families which were new versions of premium-rate SMS Trojans that signed up victims to subscription services. Given our historically fragile cellular infrastructure and slow strides toward encryption, user and corporate data on mobile platforms may face serious risks over the next year.
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