Dangerous Trend in Malicious Code Activity

Each year, government agencies and corporations around the globe step up their efforts to fight malicious code activity. Although this threat has been a problem since the inception of the Internet, the newest trend shows a shift in activity to emerging countries as their Internet infrastructure rapidly grows.

The Brazilian Danger

Although the United States and China continue to be the primary sources for malicious code of all types, Brazil rose from the fifth position to third place last year. While this country was already ranked at the top of the list for spam zombies, it increased in every other category including phishing sites and malicious bots. This dramatic rise in unethical activity is directly related to Brazil's rapidly growing broadband usage and Internet infrastructure. Brazil’s government has proposed new laws to criminalize this activity after attacks resulted in electrical blackouts and the hijacking of an important government website.

India Isn’t Far Behind

During 2009, India moved from 11th place to the fifth spot due to a surge in its overall malicious code activity. In fact, India ranks third in the world for sending out spam and second for malicious programs. Like Brazil, India has shown a steady growth in their online technology and Internet use as their economy has grown.

The Growing Use of Crimeware Kits

While hacking, spamware, and malicious code was once the exclusive realm of highly-trained computer specialists who knew operating systems, networking protocols and other technical arenas inside and out, this is no longer the case. Crimeware kits can be found for a relatively low price online and allow the ambitious cyber-criminal to easily adapt the basic code to meet their needs. In practically no time, the kit-owner can send emails to unsuspecting Internet users to lure them to a malicious site. Once there, a bot is installed on the victim’s computer to monitor usage and steal personal information. The bot can even solicit new victims by sending out more spam from the infected computer. To illustrate the fact that there is no honor among these thieves, the latest kits can detect an older bot running on a victim’s computer and intercept its stolen information.

This Complicates Virus Detection

Although the security providers are busily trying to fight these intruders, the situation has become complicated. As individual hackers around the world use these kits to target online banking customers, the number of unique pieces of malware has skyrocketed. For example, a single crimeware kit known as the Zeus Kit has been modified to create about 90,000 unique programs according to a Symantec report. As this wave of malicious code continues to grow, it will be hard for both government agencies and the security industry to keep up.

It’s more important than ever to monitor both your employee’s usage of the Internet and your own to protect your valuable IT resources. With targeted attacks directed towards corporate entities, government agencies, and individual users on the rise, the Internet is becoming a more dangerous environment as criminals in emerging countries take advantage of their new online world.