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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master

NRT-0277 MPack Malware Said to be More Dangerous Than Phishing Attacks:

The MPack toolkit, which is used to infect users' computers with malware designed to steal personal and financial information, is more dangerous than phishing attacks, according to web security company Finjan. The malware has reportedly led to half a million successful infections of Trojans out of 3.1 million attempts. According to Finjan, the toolkit is very "creative" as it can steal bank account information, such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and social security numbers without leaving a trace and send the data to criminals via a secure connection to avoid detection. According to an expert, users with PCs infected by MPack would not notice any changes to their normal browsing experience. "This form of attack is more dangerous than previous forms of phsishing, which relied on fraudulent web sites. Because this attack happens on the customers' own PC and is encrypted, it makes it extremely difficult to detect," said Yuval Ben-Itzhak of Finjan. As attacks become more evasive and obfuscated, security companies will "find it more difficult to put their hands on malicious code, analyze it in their labs and create a signature for it," he said, noting that "antivirus, reputation-based services and URL filtering solutions are potentially limited in their ability to cope with evasive attacks, which appear once and then vanish."

(www.itpro.co.uk 31JUL07)

Last Modified: Tuesday, 07-Aug-2007 21:23:37 EDT