2011 Mid-Year Security Report - Blue coat

Executive Overview

Innovation breeds opportunity, even for the underground. Web and mobility innovations focus on ease of use, availability, and building large user audiences, but they breed opportunity for cybercrime. Security
typically comes later, after a period of breaches and security issues put the issue front and center. Halfway through 2011, we are in the midst of this security period.

The majority of web threats are now delivered from trusted and popular  web sites that have been hacked for use by cybercrime. For this reason, reputation defenses become less effective. The once obscure link farm for
search engine poisoning now resides within popular web sites. The exception for link farms is now a rogue domain or remote web location. Phishing attacks overwhelmingly come from popular and trusted web sites hacked by cybercrime. The recent large-scale accumulation of user identities and email IDs by cybercrime only raises the concern for phishing attacks and Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) that target specific organizations and users.

Search engine poisoning (SEP) ranks as the number one web threat delivery method at this point in the year. To be more specific, image searches have passed text searches and are now the top vector for malware delivery. Pirated movies and games and adult content, are top lures as new devices
provide a high-definition entertainment landscape for users. Web pages are often dynamically created for SEP attacks, emphasizing the value of real-time web rating and threat-analysis defenses. Spam related to pirated
movies and games is also making a comeback, delivering fake-codecs or fake-warez dynamically leading to malware.

The web sites we trust are cybercrime’s entry points into our lives. Given that web sites today contain thousands of dynamic web links to various content types and sources, innovations like malvertising now rank as the second most popular web threat delivery method halfway through 2011. Cybercrime

resides patiently in multi-tier ad networks and selectively picks targets and assesses exploits and vulnerabilities. When the opportunity is open, it strikes. Patience and selective analysis provide a better return on investment than the mass injection attacks of years past Week-over-week analysis shows SEP at a steady volume with a tidal effect of highs and lows. For malvertising, the charts are full of peaks and valleys as

attack volume changes dramatically day over day and often within a 24-hour period. Research on dynamic web links shows cybercrime is quickly moving to new domains and IP addresses – faster than in years past. While some long-lived cybercrime sites continue to exist, the trend is speed of transfer to
new identities and locations to evade detection.

From a user agent perspective, some Mac users are searching for pirated goods and images and falling into known malware delivery vectors. While exploit kits today focus on Windows users, many Mac users have their noses pressed against the glass of cybercrime. When cybercrime’s focus switches to the Mac, these users will be lined up like lambs. Before 2011 ends, it would not be surprising to see Mac users facing web threat issues themselves.




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