Attackers are becoming more and more organized and efficient in their information-stealing efforts and are using tactics gleaned from security professionals to get better at what they do. In a panel discussion at the RSA Conference, Joe Stewart of SecureWorks said the the trend toward organized, professional groups of attackers is moving to another level now.
Wired.com’s Kim Zetter writes that the attacker community is now essentially an industry of its own.
Lawrence Baldwin, a security consultant and operator of MyNetWatchman, who spoke on a panel with Stewart, described malware-distribution services that help malicous-code creators infect machines with viruses and keystroke logging programs. The entrepreneurs behind the distribution services control legions of hacked computers corralled into botnets, and charge customers (other hackers and spammers) for the privilege of running their own malware on the hacked machines.
Read the full report here.
