Phishing An Evolution: July 2005
Phishing An Evolution: July 2005
July 2005
“stealth” / advanced
Tools
High scanning techniques
Staged
packet spoofing denial of service attack
sniffers distributed
attack tools
Intruder sweepers www attacks
Knowledge
automated probes/scans
GUI
back doors
disabling audits network mgmt. diagnostics
hijacking
burglaries sessions
Attack exploiting known vulnerabilities
Sophistication
password cracking
self-replicating code
password guessing
Attackers
Low
Source: CERT 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000+
FY04
Source: APWG
How often is the method Reused regularly for weeks or months Most malware is effective for a week
viable? before requiring a change. Due to before anti-virus vendors develop
simple changes in the mailing list, signatures.
a variety of people can be solicited Some phishing groups use malware in
– information is almost never limited distributions. While these
collected from the same person programs may exist for much
twice. longer durations, they generally
collect less information.
A single person that is infected may
compromise the same information
multiple times.
Total development cost A single phishing server may take one A single malware system, including
to the phishers? week to develop. The server may Trojan and receiving server, may
then be applied to hundreds of take months to develop. Each
blind drop servers and reused for variant may take a week or longer
weeks or longer. Changes to the to develop. When generic anti-
phishing email content (bait) can virus signatures appear,
be measured in hours and may not redevelopment may take weeks or
need a change to the phishing months.
server.
Company Confidential Copyright 2005 Secure Science Corp. 20
Phishing Malware
Phishing technology generally follows spam technology by 6-12
months.
The recent developments in spam provide insight into upcoming changes
in phishing technology.
Over the last six months, spam as a whole has shown a dramatic increase
in malware. The malware ranges from common attachment worms and
Trojans to hostile JavaScript/Object exploits.
Over the last few years, malware consisted of a single executable that
infected hundreds of thousands, or millions, of systems.
These mega-viruses, such as Sobig, Blaster, Code Red, and Nimda used a
single executable to infect a large system base. After the primary infection,
other variants were released, but these were designed to be additional mega-
viruses.
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