eScan, one of the leading Anti-Virus and Content Security Solution providers, has studied on a recent poll that says 32% of the top IT professionals agreed that data breaches and malware are the top threats that any organization faces.
According to the further enquiry poll, the trends have been noticed that the adverse effect of security programs is likely to get worse in future specifically because of continuous evolution of BYOD practices and increase in adoption of cloud technology, both public and private.
Let us see how malwares are baring their heinous fangs to cripple different sectors of IT industry.
- Malware threat to Virtual Currencies: Extensive research has found that virtual transactions could result in entrenchment with malware and other prohibited data like child abuse images, pornographic content etc. Bitcoin, a form of electronic currency, uses P2P (peer-to-peer) networks to track and verify such transactions. Most Bitcoin-mining malware arrive via malicious downloads or sometimes through social media. Exploitation of system and/or application vulnerabilities mainly leads to such infection. As a result the ‘cyber hygiene’ gets seriously affected and it becomes an ideal place to host unlawful data or images.
- Malware attack to Chat rooms: Cyber criminals are always trying to target various Chat-rooms, specially gaming chat-rooms. These are always a matter of entertainment to the kids and teens resulting in easy access for the crooks to convert the chat session into a cyber-trouble. Any malware which is usually associated with web-based delivery are responsible for this. However, there are some genuine chat-rooms which are useful. The guardians’ role is important here. They need to teach their kids about how to remain safe from these hazards. The children should learn not to enter any unauthorized chat-rooms that might appear as a pop-up!
- Malware target hotel Wi–Fi: Hotel Wi-Fi is sometimes prone to malware attack. Thousands of hotel chains rely on such wireless networks for hospitality of the customers. Very recently researchers had found vulnerabilities in the wireless routers mostly used by the hotel industry which allowed a hacker to spread malware through a hotel’s Wi-Fi network. These malwares can also track sensitive data and attack the hotel’s Internet-connected operational systems. Such vulnerabilities allow the malware to get injected into the guests’ devices and even monitor and steal data transferred through the network.
- Macro-based Malware: Macros are a series of commands used to complete a task automatically and are generally found in Word Documents and in Spreadsheets. The culprits have once again made use of this capability to compose malware-laden macros. Macros execute immediately after the file is opened; the victim who opens the file remains unaware that anything unnatural happened to his/ her system. Cyber felons prefer macro-based malware because it is versatile and requires minimum effort.
- “NewPosThings” Malware: The ‘NewPosThings’ malware has been found recently trying to control the hub of IP addresses associated with certain airports. POS malware are always a threat since credit and debit card transactions happen throughout the year. A POS intrusion mainly happens when a card is swiped at any ecommerce transaction. These malware have RAM scraper capabilities, key-logging routines, dumping Virtual Network Computing (VNC) passwords and sensitive information gathering. Most POS systems are Windows-based which makes it simpler to create such malware to run on them. The devices used in such industry are open to the web and sometimes protected with easy passwords making it vulnerable for such attacks. Recently, researchers have detected that the latest malware even de-activates security warnings on systems and creates anti-debugging methods.
