The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, Volume XI

Twice yearly, Symantec publishes a comprehensive report on theoverall worldwide Internet threat landscape. With a dedicated team ofresearchers, authors, and the support of over 1,800 analysts worldwide,the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report has become oneof the largest publicly available reports of its kind.The reportprovides a window into the world of malicious code, network attacks,vulnerabilities, phishing, and spam. With a threat landscape dominatedby data theft, data leakage, fraud, and coordinated criminal activity,the team behind the report recognized the importance of looking notjust at the types and volume of the attacks, but how, where, and whythey take place. For the first time in this report, we discuss not onlythe root causes behind these types of activities, but where theseactivities take place in the world and what they’re worth in anunderground economy.

We’ve seen a gradual process where blended threats have morphed froma single attack targeting millions of people to higher numbers ofindividual attacks targeting individuals or small groups. Targetedmalicious code is all the rage and if you have the knowledge, skills,and a high-value target, chances are you’re taking advantage of azero-day vulnerability to install your bot software, spam zombie,phishing site, or keystroke logger. On the surface, that wouldn’t seemterribly out of the ordinary, but today a large number of thesedisparate threats are working together with a relatively small group ofindividuals or organizations (small being relative to the number ofInternet users in the world) reaping the profits. When we say profits,were not talking about hundreds or even thousands of dollars—we’retalking millions. The 2006 Internet Fraud Crime Reportestimates that in the United States a little over $198,000,000 was lostdue to fraud in 2006. If we take into account other large economiesaround the world, we’re now talking about billions of dollars. If thevoice telling Ray Kinsella in the movie Field of Dreams to “build it and they will come” were an Internet maxim, then criminals really have built their “field of dreams.”

Since 2005, the overall number of threats has grown nearly 300percent. In 2006 alone, the overall number of threats has grown by 64percent. Trojans have grown by 22 percentage points, home userscontinue to be the most targeted sector with 93 percent of all attacks,phishing and spam continue to increase, and the number of bot-infectedcomputers worldwide rose to just over six million. Overall, thisdoesn’t paint a terribly rosy picture, but at the end of the day what’sreally important is that we have the ability to track, identify, andreport on these types of activities so that we can build products andservices that help people protect themselves. Knowing what’s takingplace in the Internet threat landscape is just half thebattle—forewarned is forearmed. The other half is building solutionsthat mitigate these types of risks and Symantec is at the forefront ofthose efforts. As we move from reactive to proactive and predictivesolutions, Symantec is hard at work, building the next generation ofsecurity solutions that we believe will meet those challenges.

For more information, please see the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report.