Linsanity, Whitney's Death, and New Android Threats Dominate Cybercrime Scene

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Trend Micro Canada

Apr 17, 2012, 07:00 ET

Trend Micro issues new security roundup report for Q1 2012

TORONTO, April 17, 2012 /CNW/ - Trend Micro Threat researchers report a significant shift in the way the security industry approaches targeted attacks and advanced persistent threats, which are now viewed as a long-term, on-going campaign versus the typical fast "smash-and-grab incidents" favored by cybercriminals in the past, according to the Trend Micro (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704) Q1 2012 Security Roundup Report.

According to the Report, Q1's visible events - Linsanity, Whitney Houston's death, and sociopolitical upheavals around the world - gave cybercriminals new social-engineering campaign material, equipping them to penetrate and or infect users and networks in order to access victim's data.

"The threat landscape continues to evolve.  Organizations -- public or private, large or small need the best security for their physical, virtualized, and cloud infrastructures  -- to ensure that valuable information is protected no matter what type of infrastructure is delivering the information, and no matter what device is used by the employee to securely access it." says Jim Short, Trend Micro Canada's General Manager.

The Report also noted that cybercriminals who launch Advanced Persistent Threats or APTs will often keep track of the different attacks within a campaign in order to determine which individual attack compromised a specific victim's network. The recent Luckycat campaign, which made headlines around the world, in particular, attacked a diverse set of targets using a variety of malware, some of which have been linked to other cyber-espionage campaigns.

Notable trends in Q1 2012:

  • Canada has replaced the United States as the top hoster of malicious URLs per million residents in 2012 with threat researchers reporting an increase of malicious urls from 2801 in 2011 to 21,249 in 2012—nearly double that of the United States.

  • Cybercriminals are capitalizing on the growth of Android users who use their smartphones to gain Internet access. In fact, Trend Micro identified approximately 5000 new malicious Android apps in the first quarter.

  • Apple surpassed Oracle, Google and Microsoft in reported vulnerabilities, with a total of 91.  Oracle came in second, with 78; Google, 73; Microsoft, 43. Apart from posting the highest number of reported vulnerabilities, Apple also issued a record-breaking number of patches last March.

  • New social networking site, Pinterest, gained not just popularity but also notoriety. Site users were drawn into "re-pinning" a Starbucks logo to get supposed gift cards but instead got malware.

  • This quarter's top spam-sending countries included: India (20 percent), Indonesia (13 percent), South Korea (12 percent), and Russia (10 percent).

  • During this quarter, the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network™, a cloud computing infrastructure, protected Trend Micro customers against a total of: 15.3 billion spam, 338.4 thousand malware, and 1.3 billion malicious URLs.

The full round-up report can be found here: http://www.trendmicro.com/cloud-content/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/reports/rpt_security_in_the_age_of_mobility.pdf

Trend Micro security experts are in Toronto on April 17th, Ottawa on April 18th and Calgary on April 19th for the 3rd Annual Cloud Security Awareness Week and available to comment on this Report.

Trend Micro Incorporated, (TYO: 4704;TSE: 4704), a global leader in Internet content security, focuses on securing the exchange of digital information for businesses and consumers. Trend Micro is advancing integrated threat management technology to protect operational continuity, personal information, and property from malware, spam, data leaks and the newest Web threats. A transnational company, with headquarters in Tokyo, and operations in nearly 30 countries including Canada, Trend Micro's trusted security solutions are sold through its business partners worldwide.

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