Threat Management, Risk Identification/Classification/Mitigation

Sophos Releases 2005 Threat Management Report

One of the many things I found interesting was this quote:

“…spyware has become one of the biggest threats that businesses now face.”


Hmmm, I wonder how they are defining Spyware? I’ve seen malware, labeled as “Spyware”, that created a backdoor on a users system. I believe that malware is a more appropriate term, and agree that malware on the desktop poses the greatest threat to businesses.
They also list Zafi.D as being the most critical malware threat. It seems to fit the profile of typical malware that we have seen in the past: Spreads through email, adds itself to the system startup in the registry, masks itself as anti-virus software, kills all processes that contain the term “firewall” and “virus”, sets up a backdoor listener, and has the capabilty to update itself.
Whew, I used to say “Glad I run a Mac with OS X”, however Mac users are facing new and uglier threats than ever before (Of course, there is no mention of them in the report). I debated whether or not to post this link (there is no information targeted at “good guys” on this site), however I believe people should know:
http://felinemenace.org/~nemo/
This site contains shellcode, presentations, and exploits targeted specifically at OS X. This is only going to get worse with the switch to Intel, I’m told that shellcode (the bytecode injected into the system once exploited) is easier to write for Intel than for PowerPC. And with Apple potentially gaining more marketshare, they become more of a target.
Sophos Security Threat Management Report 2005
.com

Paul Asadoorian

Paul Asadoorian is currently the Principal Security Evangelist for Eclypsium, focused on firmware and supply chain security awareness. Paul’s passion for firmware security extends back many years to the WRT54G hacking days and reverse engineering firmware on IoT devices for fun. Paul and his long-time podcast co-host Larry Pesce co-authored the book “WRTG54G Ultimate Hacking” in 2007, which fueled the firmware hacking fire even more. Paul has worked in technology and information security for over 20 years, holding various security and engineering roles in a lottery company, university, ISP, independent penetration tester, and security product companies such as Tenable. In 2005 Paul founded Security Weekly, a weekly podcast dedicated to hacking and information security. In 2020 Security Weekly was acquired by the Cyberrisk Alliance. Paul is still the host of one of the longest-running security podcasts, Paul’s Security Weekly, he enjoys coding in Python & telling everyone he uses Linux.

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