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| Tuesday, September 07, 2010 | News | Advisories | Partners | Support | Contact Us | |
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LiveSquare Security Team Advisories Return to the listing of advisories LSST [2008.20.136.1022] Online profiles, personal web sites, and social networking sites used for advanced user targeting Personal information is becoming more important to malware and phishing system operators. Infection systems are becoming more personal. The malware groups and botnet herders are using mass customization techniques to raise their effective yield on attacks. Interestingly, the personal information extraction appears to be the first and highest priority upon a successful infection. The LSST Team believes that this reflects an emphasis on the monetization of the malware industry and possibly the needs of state sponsored cyber warfare agents. "The desired outcome appears the ability to identify and/or target a specific individual or classification of individuals rather than merely general data delivery such as SPAM." said Brett L. Scott, CTO of LiveSquare.com. As the cyber warfare arms race continues, malware and other threats should be evaluated for their military value as much as their commercial value. History shows that government actors are keenly interested in social network analysis as a means to find spies, ideological threats, and as an aid to their resource estimates. "There can be no doubt that the majority of what is going on is mostly commercial exploitation of information, but current trends suggest that certain clients of this data are influencing what information is sought. These clients are likely military or state sponsored." |
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