Behind the scenes: Symantec's malware battle

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Social Engineering

Another clear new trend is that rather than malware getting more complex, it was more the case that criminals were finding different and unique ways to infect users, using social engineering techniques. The work for criminals now was in finding new ways for users to download and install the malware, such as in using personal details taken from places such as Facebook, MySpace and even Google.

"It's not the technology," Hogan said. "Malware is downloaded by social engineering means. It is the most efficient way of getting it into people's systems."

The social engineering focus means that the technical aspect of the threats wouldn't change much in the future, he said. "Criminals don't need to know the code, they just need the applications. I think we'll see minor changes but from a technical perspective much won't change. It'll be the social engineering which will lure the victims."

Silentbanker

Symantec's engineers gave an example of malware they had had seen called 'Silentbanker'. This was a Trojan which targeted 400 banks worldwide and intercepted web traffic before it left browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The way it worked was that it employed various ways to find what they needed to access money which usually meant the victim's username, password or a PIN. It had various ways of doing this, one of which was called credential stealing. This involved the Trojan creating HTML code which matched what was on the banking website, and asking for personal details. In other words, it relied on human failures as well as technological ones.

Chopped bodies

Symantec said it didn't usually focus much on the motivations of the criminals, such as whether it was for financial gain or an act of vandalism. Hogan compared their investigation of a malware affected user to that of a murder: "We've found a chopped body. We look at what killed it rather than the motive [of the killer]."

And with the current IT security situation, there's an increasing number of chopped bodies lying around.

IT PRO put the question that maybe it was a good thing for them that there was a lot of IT threat out there as indeed, it kept them in good business. Hogan laughed and said: "Computers will always be around and data will always need protection. There is more than enough to deal with now than we can actually cope with."

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