Cisco предупреждает о возможном увеличении атак хакеров на смартфоны и планшетные телефоны

PanARMENIAN.Net - Global annual spam volumes dropped for the first time in the history of the Internet.

In the global spam update in the Cisco 2009 Annual Security Report, emerging economies showed the sharpest increases in spam production. In 2010, the problem spots were developed nations, with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom displaying markedly higher rates of spam volume. In the United Kingdom, for example, spam volume rose almost 99 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to Cisco research.

One likely reason for this spam growth is the spread of broadband Internet in these countries. As in other developed nations, the faster the Internet pipeline, the easier it is to launch botnet-driven spam campaigns. In spite of these increases, it’s important to note that global annual spam volumes actually dropped—the first time this has happened in the history of the Internet. The reason is that some key players in the spam world were halted by security researchers, resulting in a marked decline in spam.

Brazil, China, and Turkey—all of which figured high on last year’s list of spam nations— showed significantly lower volumes of spam in 2010. In particular, Turkey’s spam volume dropped 87 percent from 2009 to 2010. Service providers in China and Turkey have made concentrated efforts to eradicate the botnets that produce spam by working closely with their customers. Brazil’s spam volume has been in decline since Internet service providers began restricting access to port 25, which is used by spammers for relaying email. Governments seem to place greater importance on taking a leadership role in fighting spam, and are setting aside resources for anti-spam efforts.

In Germany, for example, where spam volume increased 10 percent in 2010, a new Anti-Botnet Initiative has been funded by the country’s Ministry of the Interior, with funds intended to help consumers clean up computers that have been infected by botnets. Five German Internet service providers are participating in the program, and will identify infected computers on their networks and notify owners, who are then eligible for free malware-removal assistance.

While it’s only beginning to percolate, a trend is clearly emerging: Cybercriminals, looking for new opportunities outside of the PC environment, are investing more resources toward developing exploits that specifically target users of mobile devices.

This shift in focus toward mobile users is being spurred for another reason: A significant “tipping point” in vulnerabilities has been reached. PC vendors are building better security into their products, and they are moving faster than ever to provide updates, alert users to potential flaws, and make patches available to users. This means it is becoming increasingly time-consuming and resource-intensive to find ways to exploit platforms that once were so lucrative—in particular, the Microsoft Windows platform.