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| SecurityProNews > Insider Reports > Insider > A Look Back On 2004 Security Issues |
[ insider_reports_insider ]A Look Back On 2004 Security Issues
Jeremy L. Muncy Staff Writer 2004-12-29  Insider Reports RSS Feed
With the New Year only days away, let us look back on some of the security stories that made the news in 2004, MyDoom, Phishing scams, Netsky… the list just keeps going.
The mass mailing virus, MyDoom, became one of the fastest spreading ever and was predicted to last for months, if not years. "This is the most aggressive that we have seen to date," said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs, referring to the virus. MyDoom spawned numerous variants probably making it the most successful virus of its kind in '04. In the early months of '04 a second version of the Netsky virus started to spread more successfully than its predecessors. The variant, Netsky.B, used e-mail to send copies of itself to potential victims. "The author, it seems, has done something to improve the virus's spread," said Alfred Huger, the senior director of engineering for security firm Symantec. 2004 marked an increase of the biggest flaw in computer security, the uneducated user. It jumped by nearly 25% per month. "Phishers hijack brands for the purpose of fraud and degrade consumers' trust in those brands. That's what makes phishing so different than other types of online threats," Kim Legelis, director of industry solutions at security software maker Symantec, said. Search the SecurityProNews article archive to read all of 2004's articles. USA: Your Number One Source For Spam in 2004. Chris Richardson of WebProNews, recently wrote an article about the United States and where they stand concerning spam origins. The majority of spam mailings received around the world originates from the United States according to software company Sophos. In order to compile their list, company researchers monitored all spam messages that were sent to their network during 2004. Topping this list was the United States, which is responsible for 42.11% of spam mailings received worldwide. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, had these comments, "When we first reported on the top spamming countries back in February 2004, the USA had the excuse that the CAN-SPAM act had been in existence for a couple of months. Almost a year and millions of spam messages later, it is quite evident that that the CAN-SPAM legislation has made very little headway in damming the flood of spam." According to Sophos, the top spam producing countries are as follows: 1.) United States - 42.11% 2.) South Korea - 13.43% 3.) China (incl Hong Kong) - 8.44% 4.) Canada - 5.71% 5.) Brazil - 3.34% 6.) Japan - 2.57% 7.) France - 1.37% 8.) Spain - 1.18% 9.) United Kingdom - 1.13% 10.) Germany - 1.03% 11.) Taiwan - 1.00% 12.) Mexico - 0.89% 13.) Others - 17.8% AOL & Yahoo New Targets Of Google Worm. Just a few days after Google tried to put a stop to the Santy worm, numerous security firms began giving warnings of variants beginning to spread via Google and other search engines. "Perl.Santy.B is a worm written in Perl script that attempts to spread to Web servers running versions of the phpBB 2.x bulletin board software prior to 2.0.11," warned Symantec. "It uses AOL or Yahoo search to find potential new infection targets." The Santy worm and variants only affect bulletin boards and pose no threat to users. View All Articles by Jeremy L. Muncy About the Author: Jeremy Muncy is the editor of http://www.SecurityProNews.com. More insider_reports_insider Articles Insider Reports RSS Feed
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