Live map shows cyber-war in real time

Cyber-intelligence firm builds heatmap to show online attacks around the world as they happen A heat map depicting cyber-warfare as it happens has revealed the extent of the online attacks that ricochet between China and the United States. The mesmerising depiction has been created by Norse Corporation – a company that monitors global spyware and malware. The map is based on 130 terabytes of information gathered from 40 countries and eight million so-called "honeypots" – computers that emulate the kinds of programs cyber-attackers tend to attack, like ATM software and corporate email, BuzzFeed explains. The map shows a range of different information, including which country a cyber attack comes from, where it is aimed, and details about what kind of attack it is. The attacks it displays represent only one per cent of the total data Norse tracks. If the company attempted to display any more than that it would become illegible, it says. Although many of the attacks seem to be emanating from China, that impression may be misleading, NetworkWorld says, as "many attackers are good at masking their real location".  At time of writing, the five most frequently attacked countries appear to be the US, China, Singapore, UK and Thailand. And apart from China, the assaults seem to originate from the US, the Netherlands, Russia and...

Read More........→July 15, 2014

Malware re-birth a new threat?

Indian Express, Agencies : Washington, Scientists have claimed that new breeds of malware could leave computer systems and even critical infrastructure defenceless to attack from cyber criminals or foreign governments. An international team, led by Murray Brand, says that a theoretical attack strategy it calls a malware rebirthing botnet would render existing antivirus measures obsolete by using different kinds of malware in a coordinated strike. The attacker would first use a worm to create a botnet of infected slave computers, then upload a honeypot programme to attract and capture other malware from the internet. The captured malware would then be sent back to the attacker and altered in what Brand calls a rebirthing suite, improving its defences against antivirus programs with anti-analysis tools and tailoring them for the coming attack before distributing them among the botnet. The attacker now has an array of advanced, customised malware that are extremely difficult if not impossible for antivirus programs to detect that can be deployed against a target system from multiple angles. "Recognition of malware is dependent upon an analyst having already analysed the behaviour of the malware and extracted an identifying signature," Dr Brand said. If the new malware is significantly different to any known malware, antivirus...

Read More........→September 21, 2013