Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 24 February 2008 18:52
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 4
McAfee starts with the United States, and calls it “The Great Malware Melting Pot”.
They say that the US was “once the launching pad of all malware, today malware in the US includes elements of malicious software seen around the world”.
Nowadays, attackers using increasingly clever social engineering skills to trick victims and are looking to exploit the viral nature of Web 2.0.
Although the United States has cybercrime laws in place, the lack of international cybercrime laws and the differences in extradition treaties make it difficult for enforcement agents to prosecute criminals across borders.
So, what about Europe? Here’s where we see malware writers getting trickier, knowing that most European countries don’t have English as their primary language.
McAfee notes that with “23 languages in the European Union alone, language barriers used to be a hurdle for miscreants”.
They say that consumers in non-English speaking countries often simply deleted English-language spam and phishing e-mail, just as English speaking Net users might delete Russian, Chinese or spam in other languages they may not be familiar with.
So, today’s malware authors are adapting the language to the Internet domain site where the scam message is being sent, and malicious Web sites serve up malware in a language determined by the country the target is located in.
They take advantage of cultural events too, such as the FIFA soccer World Cup, which in the summer of 2006 prompted email scams and phishing sites luring in soccer lovers.
With the increased sophistication of malware, computer users in the EU are under attack.
So, what’s happening in China, the country with the great firewall around the Internet? And how can you protect yourself against these threats, whether using McAfee's security software - or someone else's? Please read onto page 3.
