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IM Threats Up 1500%
John Stith
Staff Writer
2005-11-02
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Instant messaging (IM) security entity IMLogic released new figures on Tuesday detailing the onslaught on instant messengers by hackers and other with malicious intent. The nasty code floating through disables anti-virus software and logs end user keystrokes to steal identities.
IMLogic said IM security threats were up 1500% during the month of October 2005 from a year ago and more than 30% from September of 2005. They said as the number of threats grew, the payload carried by IM worms additionally evolved to become more malicious and destructive.
"The alarming prospect of IM threats that disable virus protection software is a wake up call to enterprises to put additional protection in place for defense-in-depth," said IMlogic Chief Technology Officer Jon Sakoda. "The significant rise in IM virus and worm activity coupled with the development of increasingly sophisticated IM threats requires organizations to adopt a comprehensive security strategy for IM and real-time applications."
Some of their key information includes:
- IM threats in October increased 1500 percent over October 2004;
-- IM Threats in October increased 30 percent over September 2005;
-- 87 percent of all unique IM threats were IM worms, 12 percent were viruses and one percent were client vulnerabilities;
-- In 2005, 62 percent of all IM threats targeted MSN, while 31 percent targeted AOL and seven percent targeted Yahoo;
-- In October, however, 66 percent of new IM threats targeted AOL Instant Messenger, while only 33 percent targeted MSN and one percent targeted Yahoo;
-- 99 percent of all threat activity relied on social engineering to deliver payload;
-- Traditional anti-virus signature files were available for six percent of reported threats at the time of first detection or registration with the IMlogic Threat Center.
IMLogic did say that they've seen a 2000% increase in IM attacks sine January and each successive quarter has shown a significant increase from the previous month. This goes to show the bad guys are always looking for new ways to get into people's PCs. It also means people and companies using IM must remain vigilant and watch what comes into their IM messages.
About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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