Malicious activity continues to grow at a record pace

Bengaluru: Symantec announced that malicious code activity continued to grow at a record pace throughout 2008, primarily targeting confidential information of computer users.

According to the company's Internet Security Threat Report(ISTR) volume XIV, Symantec created more than 1.6 million new malicious code signatures in 2008. This equates to more than 60 percent of the total malicious code signatures ever created by Symantec-response to the rapidly increasing volume and proliferation of new malicious code threats. These signatures helped Symantec block an average of more than 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe each month during 2008.

The ISTR is derived from data collected by millions of Internet sensors, research, and monitoring of hacker communications, and provides a global view of the state of Internet security. The study period for the ISTR XIV covers January 2007 to December 2008.

The report noted that web surfing remained the primary source of new infections in 2008, and that attackers are relying more and more on customized malicious code toolkits to develop and distribute their threats.

In tune with the global trends, India too saw a substantial increase in its proportion of malicious activity in almost every category. India had the fifth highest number of broadband subscribers in the Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) region in 2008 and the third highest volume of malicious activity, with 10 percent of the regional total. Computers from the US and China were the leading source of web-based attacks targeting India, accounting for 84 percent and 5 percent respectively.

“Due to a rapidly growing Internet infrastructure, a burgeoning broadband population and rampant software piracy, India is expected to witness increased malicious activities,” said Vishal Dhupar, MD, Symantec India. “Unless enterprises improve security protocols and measures to counter malicious activities, India will continue to be a soft target of Internet threats.”

According to the report, India had an average of 836 bots per day during 2008 and there were 1,03,812 distinct bot-infected computers observed in the country during the period. This was a staggering increase of nearly 250 percent from the previous report.

Globally, in 2008, Symantec observed an average of more than 75,000 active bot-infected computers each day, a 31 percent increase from 2007. India also saw a huge surge in bot command & control servers from 40 in 2007 to 70 in 2008. Bot command-and-control (C&C) servers are computers that botnet owners use to relay commands to bot- infected computers on their networks. The sharp increase in bot-infected computers in India points towards low adoption of security measure that includes
anti-malware, intrusion prevention and intrusion detection.

Amongst the cities in India with the highest number of bot-infected computers, Mumbai figured at the top with 37 percent followed by Chennai at 24 percent and Delhi at 7 percent. Cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Surat, Ahmadabad, Cochin and Pune too had a sizeable share of bot-infected computers.