Unpatched computers hit hard by attacks in January 2009, reports Fortinet

Staff Writers
Thursday, 05 February 2009 16:17

IT Industry - Market

There’s yet another internet threats report released today, this time by Fortinet, a provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions.

Releasing its 2009 Threatscape report today, covering the top Internet based threats seen "in the wild" for January, Fortinet revealed it had seen a surge in attacks against unpatched computer exploits.

Fortinet says that, originally detected in October 2008, a buffer overflow exploit that was outlined in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067, was used as the basis of a series of attacks on un-patched machines from the end of December last year through January this year.

“The exploit affects computers running Windows Vista,XP, 2000, Server 2003, and Server 2008. This series of recent attacks reached a peak level of activity on 14 January 14.”

Fortinet also reports that online gaming malware continued to build momentum in January 2009, with two Trojans increasing in activity. According to Fortinet, Spy/OnLineGames claimed first place on the company’s Top 100 malware variants list, with W32/Dropper.VEM!tr  “surging enormously.”  “This  demonstrates that criminals are now focusing on using online gaming malware designed to pilfer passwords, personal details, and credit card information, with the US, Japan, China, Taiwan and India the most targeted countries.”

Fortinet's FortiGuard global security research team also observed increased levels of spam activity, the report says, with the activity largely driven by social engineering style campaigns which leveraged concerns about economic problems, and the recent US presidential inauguration.

Derek Manky, project manager, cyber security and threat research, Fortinet, said "while eavesdropping keyloggers and spam-spewing botnets continued to rise in popularity this month, what's most concerning is the explosion of the now dated MS08-067 vulnerability.

"Propagating as far back as October 2008, this vulnerability underscores the importance of proper patch management and a layered security approach to avoid epidemic outbreaks of
this nature."

To read the full January Threatscape report, including the top threat rankings in each category, go to http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_jan_2009.html.