IBM’s X-Force 2012 Trend and Risk Report, which shows a sharp increase in browser-related exploits, renewed concerns around social media password security, and continued disparity in mobile devices and corporate bring your own device (BYOD) programs.
"Companies are faced with a constantly evolving threat landscape, with emerging technologies making it increasingly difficult to manage and secure confidential data," said Kris Lovejoy, GM, IBM Security Services. "A security breach - whether from an outside attacker or an insider - can impact brand reputation, shareholder value, and expose confidential information. Our team of security threat analysts track and monitor security events and attack activity to better help our clients stay ahead of emerging threats.”
New attack surfaces with equal opportunity exploits
Since the last X-Force Trend and Risk Report, IBM’s X-Force has seen an increase in malware and malicious web activities:
* A continuing trend for attackers is to target individuals by directing them to a trusted URL or site which has been injected with malicious code. Through browser vulnerabilities, the attackers are able to install malware on the target system. The websites of many well-established and trustworthy organisations are still susceptible to these types of threats.
* The growth of SQL injection, a technique used by attackers to access a database through a website, is keeping pace with the increased usage of cross-site scripting and directory traversal commands.
* As the user base of the Mac operating system continues to grow worldwide, it is increasingly becoming a target of advanced persistent threats (APTs) and exploits, rivalling those usually seen on Windows platforms.
“We have seen an increase in the number of sophisticated and targeted attacks, specifically on Macs and exposed social network passwords,” said Clinton McFadden, senior operations manager for IBM X-Force research and development. "As long as these targets remain lucrative, the attacks will keep coming and in response, organisations should take proactive approaches to better protect their enterprises and data."
Emerging trends in mobile security
While there are reports of exotic mobile malware, most smartphone users are still most at risk of premium SMS (short message service, or texting) scams. These scams work by sending SMS messages to premium phone numbers in a variety of different countries automatically from installed applications. There are multiple scam infection approaches for this:
* An application that looks legitimate in an app store but only has malicious intent.
* An application that is a clone of a real application with a different name and some malicious code.
* A real application that has been wrapped by malicious code and typically presented in an alternative app store.
One game-changing transformation is the pervasiveness of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs. Many companies are still in their infancy in adapting policies for allowing employees to connect their personal laptops or smartphones to the company network. To make BYOD work within a company, a thorough and clear policy should be in place before the first employee-owned device is added to the company’s infrastructure. See full IBM X-Force Mid-Year Trend and risk Report for guidance on BYOD policies.
What is a secure password?
The connection between websites, cloud-based services, and webmail provides a seamless experience from device to device, but users should be cautious about how these accounts are connected, the security of their password, and what private data has been provided for password recovery or account resetting. X-Force recommends the use of a lengthy password comprised of multiple words instead of an awkward combination of characters, numbers and symbols.
On the server-side, X-Force recommends encrypting passwords to the database using a hash function that is suitable for password storage. The hash function should be computationally expensive to calculate and use a salt value for each user account which helps limit the effectiveness of 'rainbow tables' and brute force dictionary attacks.
Improvements in Internet security continue
As discussed in the 2011 IBM X-Force Trend and Risk Report, there continues to be progress in certain areas of Internet security. IBM X-Force data reports a continuing decline in exploit releases, improvements from the top 10 vendors on patching vulnerabilities and a significant decrease in the area of portable document format (PDF) vulnerabilities. IBM believes that this area of improvement is directly related to the new technology of sandboxing provided by the Adobe Reader X release.
Sandboxing technology works by isolating an application from the rest of the system, so that if compromised, the attacker code running within the application is limited to what it can do or what it can access. Sandboxes are proving to be a successful investment from a security perspective. In the X-Force report, there was a significant drop in Adobe PDF vulnerability disclosures during the first half of 2012. This development coincides nicely with the adoption of Adobe Reader X, the first version of Acrobat Reader released with sandboxing technology.
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