Globrocks Corporation

                                                                                    January 2004

Cyber Security

Global awareness on the risks associated with conducting electronic business transactions securely and safely has reached its highest level in the past 6 months and may get much higher in the very near future. 

Business, now demand to be conducted at the speeds at which the computer systems are able to work and businesses that lagged in the Technology race gets trampled in the process. We shall be noticing many more kinds of business and establishments getting connected to the internet to take advantage of Global Connectivity for instant response and reaction to business to remain competitive, especially, in the Health Care industry, not only for efficiency, accuracy and systems compatibility, but also for the new HIPAA Privacy, Technical Security, Electronic Billing and Communication Rules.

The number of confirmed computer attacks and incidents was up 84 percent over those in the fourth quarter of 2002, according to a new report released by Internet Security Systems Inc. While NAT (Network Address Translation) Firewall and other kinds of Firewall protective routers will keep hackers from discovering the nature and structure of your network (how many systems you have, what operating systems they're running, and so on) and help protect you from attackers trying to break in, they are good first line of defense, but they typically do not inspect connections for malicious code, then that's only half the battle. The other half is protecting your network from hackers who have already broken in or can possibly still break in--via a Trojan horse or Spyware  for example--and are trying to send outgoing messages and your private information to the Internet from your systems.

The new ways that Cyber-terrorists, Cyber-vandals and Crackers has learned to use to get into computer systems cause for me to suspect that the real reason for the decline in viruses this year is that the serious virus writers have graduated to more sophisticated attacks, such as Trojan horses and Spyware. The occurrence of both of these threats has increased in 2003. While it's now less likely you'll be infected by another LoveLetter- or Melissa-type virus, it's more likely you'll be hit by other maladies that could cause as much--if not more--damage.

The occurrence of both of these threats has increased in 2003. While its now maladies that could cause as much--if not more--damage. Article Update October 02' 2005  Now, 2 Years later in October 2005, it has become very clear that the suspected graduation to more sophisticated attacks is a new wave and form of even more dangerous security concern to combat known as Malware. 

Malware programs basically gets attached to HTML forms that one will fill on a website, it easily collects information such as users' personal and private information including name, credit card number, address, SSN, user names and passwords, and practically any type of information that will be filled in a web form. 

A few years ago, such programs and data operations could not be performed so easily without physical access to a users' computer, to install the malware program and to return to retrieve the collected information by the malware program now also known as "keylogger".

This new Malware program is the newest variant of the previous big family of Spyware that we talked about earlier. They are generally known as Dumaru or Nibu. The malware-spyware keylogger, is known as Srv.SSA-KeyLogger.  Srv.SSA-KeyLogger is the actual backdoor program that secretly steals data through the HTML forms from users' internet sessions, from online banking sessions, and on eBay, PayPal, and all other programs that will use the html forms to collect personal information.

We have exhaustively and closely studied products and the results of extensive tests from an independent organization. The study and tests was performed on products from Seven Major Enterprise-Class and Small Business-Class Security Software Manufacturers for Anti-Spyware and Anti-Malware Security Suites.

Our findings are quite impressive and included specifics in the areas of Spyware/Malware detection and Removal, Console/Client Configuration, Management/Deployment of Definition File Updates, Real-Time and Scheduled Scans, Reporting/Alerts/Notifications and Price.

Here's what you need to know about how these pests work--and how to protect your system from them.

Trojan horses, to refresh your memory, open ports on infected machines and allow malicious users to access data on those systems remotely. A more mainstream use of this technology is called Spyware, ad-serving software that (in the best case) allows advertisers to update and target advertising on your computer or (in the worst case) allows advertisers to track your Web habits for sale to other advertisers. The level of sophistication and the high-technology adopted in committing computer crimes, frauds and scams  electronically has also become a  Global threat to Individuals, Small Businesses, Government and Investors seeking to conduct business electronically with partners, increase their business portfolio by affiliating with other businesses and to expand globally.  

One of the real stories of the early part of 2003 has been the number of worms that have been unleashed on the Internet. The most troublesome of the lot was the SQL Slammer, which attacked servers running Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server 2000 database software that disrupted business for Financial Institutions, Government, Small and Large Businesses. The worm exploited a vulnerability for which Microsoft had released a patch six months earlier infecting thousands machines in less than 10 minutes in late January.

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