Virus trends from the pen of F-Secure
“In 2003, we only registered 1,4 million viruses and online pests, today that number is more than 70 million,” says Boris Cipot, an engineer at F-Secure.
According to the expert, the history of the development of pests in the last decade can be divided into three stages. In the first phase, which lasted until 2003, hackers usually wrote viruses as a hobby, with the aim of raising awareness or destroying them. Many times their phone numbers and contact information were included in the codes, but there is also a case where someone copied their license plate into the pest. Then came the appearance of professional virus, trojan and spyware writers whose goal was clearly to make money, cybercrime. In the period up to 2008, a sharp increase in the number of pests was observed, with the number of electronic pests jumping to 18 million in a few years, rising to 70 million in the third period marked by professional criminals.
“However, the 70 million registered pests do not mean so many spyware, trojans. Recycling has just become a fashion in the third period dominated by professionals, ”adds Cipot. Malware business is the same as trading legal software in many ways. The same pest is being sold to more than one company, with more and more spyware ads appearing, and even a developer and sales network. “Many people develop malware, but don’t use it for any purpose, but sell it to a distributor, just like the usual software. Following the example of SaaS, Maas appeared, i.e. the pest as a service. In this case, the adware or spyware only needs to be rented for the required period of time, ”says Cipot. Newer providers have entered the market, for example, many are providing hosting services for websites offering MaaS solutions. Unlike before, criminals not only operate in cyberspace, but build a real logistics chain - for example, to make purchases with stolen credit cards. In such a case, the stolen credit card information is purchased at online webshops in the country where the card was stolen, making it less suspicious to use. They are looking for and hiring people to repackage the purchased goods with a job advertisement promising a job at home, who have nothing to do but repackage the goods from the webshop and forward them to another country where the products they have acquired are already being collected. Thus, criminals do not have to appear at any of the crime scenes.
More and more people are receiving a “demand for payment” when the data stored on their computer is encrypted, and then only a few euros need to be transferred to the appropriate bank account to decrypt it. According to F-Secure, the next target of the attacks will be smartphones. Users of the Android operating system in particular may be the target of attacks, as Google Play, which offers apps for the smartphone, is unchecked. The most common abuse here is when hackers download a popular paid app and then rewrite the source code and reload the app already in the free version - thus guaranteeing that more people will download than the paid version. The trap most often set for individuals is not even noticed by many, as a setting is enough for the phone to send an SMS to a premium number per month, which does not cause a noticeable change in the phone bill - the malware maker can easily infect 1-2000 phones, which is decent earns tax-free monthly income. There are still only 7500 malware registered for mobile phones - most for Symbian and Android - but F-Secure says that number will also increase dramatically.
Source: Press release
