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Trend Micro’s Malware Report reveals New Trends

Trend Micro has released its latest analysis report on malware attacks, collected by Trend Micro researchers from October to December 2009. According to the malware data collected, the patterns and vectors of malware threats have changed in a sense that instant financial gains seem no longer the primary target of cybercriminals. The major strategy of these criminals seems to unravel and detect personal information and networking contacts to develop targeted social engineering schemes. Researchers found specifically crafted messages with popular themes as baits in spam campaigns using locally based Internet domains as launch pads for a host of phishing attacks.

“The business sector used to be the main target for financially motivated cybercriminals in the recent past. However, the patterns and vectors of malware attacks seem to have changed. Now, individuals need to carefully protect their personal information to protect it from any abuse,” commented Amit Nath, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro

The ingenuity of cybercriminals to come up with new social engineering angles seems endless. A still growing trend among them is the use of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in which they manage to insert popular news items in search engines and make them appear as top search results. The list of social engineering schemes keeps constantly evolving and cybercriminals are dramatically developing popular social networking websites as targets.

The malware landscape changed during the last quarter of 2009 and non-English content is becoming increasingly important for cybercriminals. As the number of users in the non-English speaking part of the world grows to have Internet access, local malicious computer hackers, a.k.a. black-hats, revised their tactics and mounted language and culture barriers to break into local computer networks.

Cybercriminals are becoming more and more sophisticated in employing social engineering concepts. Their “business models” deploy communication solutions such as email, IRC, IM, P2P and USB devices, and Trend Micro expects that cybercriminals will continue to use this modus operandi as prominent and major transmission vehicles of malware in 2010.