In an interview with SC Magazine, Symantec’s CEO and President Enrique Salem discussed the new security threats facing companies doing business on the internet. When asked about the top security threats, he responded with three.
“In 2009, we see three key trends that could impact IT security – a continued explosion of new malware variants, advanced web threats, and an uptick in threats related to social networking sites.” Mr. Salem reinforced that “cybercriminals are more sophisticated and driven than ever, and they operate in an increasingly profitable underground economy that makes it easy for them to not only buy and sell stolen information such as credit card data or even identities.”
Data from Symantec’s Global Intelligence Network indicates we have reached the point where there are more malicious programs created than legitimate programs every day, and that cyber attackers leverage vulnerabilities fueled by application code. Hackers compromise specific (often open source) websites, and then use them as a means for launching other attacks across the internet. (more…)
In less than one hour last Thursday, Internet security journalist Elinor Mills mastered the 
Earlier this month, 21 year-old hacker, Philip Gabriel Pettersson (aka “Stakkato”), was named in a five-count indictment that includes one count of intrusion and two counts of trade secret misappropriation involving Cisco Systems, Inc. Read more at 
On FireBlog, we’ve discussed several vulnerabilities found in open source applications, but it’s important to mention that vulnerabilities exist in even the most protected application code. Even Microsoft, which has a 1:1 ratio of programmers to quality control analysts, cannot always prevent their software from containing exploitable vulnerabilities.
