Intelligence, knowledge and organised crime
Mel Morris · Computer Fraud & Security · 2010
Trojans, phishing, rootkits and worms all have one thing in common: they are instruments of cybercrime. These and other forms of malware form the sharp end of a complex network of criminal activity designed to exploit computer users, and according to Mel Morris, CEO of Prevx, the cybersecurity community could be doing better at catching these malware attacks. In this article, Morris explores the cybercrime landscape, and finds out what we could be doing more effectively. For three decades, information security has struggled to contain the evolution of malicious software. Viruses, worms, spyware, rootkits, Trojans and phishing have all enjoyed their reign of terror. The spyware years (2000–2003) showed how the security industry was caught off-guard when most of the major security vendors took an agonising two to three years to respond to a new category of threat that affected hundreds of millions of users. Had it not been for the start-up vendors such as Lavasoft, Webroot, Safer Networking and Giant, who quickly plugged a hole for an estimated 250 million PC users, order may never have been restored. It was a close-run thing. Had organised crime spotted and leveraged the opportunity afforded by sluggish vendors, then the effects would have been catastrophic. Fortunately, spyware at this time was more about exploitation of internet advertising than bank accounts or industrial espionage.