Global Threat Report – mid-year 2013

The first half of 2013 has seen little change to the threatscape – it’s largely more and worse of the same: more malware, more spam, more sophisticated mobile malware, more espionage and more arrests, with just a couple of new developments.

AppRiver’s mid-year edition to its Global Threatscape Report primarily shows the same things getting worse. Spam, which dipped during 2012, is increasing again. “By June,” notes AppRiver, “spam traffic has nearly doubled over the total number of spam messages seen in January and is at the highest levels we have seen since November 2011.” Europe is the most common source for spam, “driven in large part by the colossal spike in traffic from Belarus.”

Java and Flash continue to be the most exploited applications; and Android the most exploited mobile platform. Blackhole remains the most widely used exploit kit, with RedKit gaining ground this year. It all sounds very familiar. But AppRiver does highlight a couple of new trends. Firstly it warns that mobile Android malware is getting more sophisticated with malware developers mimicking the methods already tried and tested in the PC world.

SOURCE: infosecurity-us.com