Re: Future Impact of Viruses on Internet

[Jim Moore <jhmfa () RIT EDU>]

As I said "I look for balance, and/or insight."  They seemed to put into
perspective some of the shifts in threats.  I do admit that they also
have the objective of selling more products.  With most vendors, some
digging is required.  I would like it a bit more balanced as well.

On the surface, there are 3 trends from recent viruses and worms that
concern me.  

- I am very disturbed by the keyloggers worms are dropping that search
for financial strings and then phone home.
- I am equally concerned with the more recent trend in malware that the
has capability to disable security software or block updates.
- I know with the RPC worms there was a variable payload worm kit
available, Blaster made the news, but Stealther was a bigger concern to
me.

I also have a friend that tracks information warfare, who I rely on to
sort out hype in that field.  People who really work in the area, are
concerned about attacks on the Internet infrastructure, but also work
from an Operations Security framework, and have had discussions about
the threats that are aimed at economic advantage, either from research
stealing, or from process destabilization.

I am evolving from the threat/vulnerability model to a
threat/adversary/vulnerability model.

Jim



-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Discussion Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Scott Weeks
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 12:13 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Future Impact of Viruses on Internet


On Tue, 3 Feb 2004, Jim Moore wrote:
;
:   (1) ThreatLab 2003 Retrospective: The Year the Mafia Moved In,
(January
:  2004) Retrieved Jan 12, 2004, Clearswift website:
:
http://www.clearswift.com/support/threatlab/resources/ThreatLabRetro2003
:  _US.pdf



Hello Jim and Everyone,

I read the article in its entirety and I see there're no supporting
documents.  After looking at this document and their product line this
seems like they're saying "the mafia is after you and we have the
software that can stop them!"  Do you have any further corroborating
information on this theory put forth by Clearswift?

scott

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