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| WatchGuard Notes Top Online Threats Relating to the 2010 World Cup | |
| Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 01:27:00 PM | |
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June 10, 2010. WatchGuard Technologies. Highlights / News Facts: Online threats relating to the 2010 World Cup increasing - WatchGuard security analysts see an explosive growth of online threats relating to the 2010 World Cup, which runs from June 11 to July 11. As a precautionary note, IT administrators should be aware of these World Cup related threats and take appropriate action to mitigate their effects. Key threat findings: * Spam - WatchGuard sees a global increase in spam using "World Cup" as part of the spam theme. In addition to traditional marketing spam, WatchGuard also sees an increase of malicious spam - spam with pernicious payloads, such as spyware, or spam that lures users to malware-laden websites. * Spear Phishing - Unlike spam, spear phishing attacks are directly targeted to small populations with socially engineered messages in order to entice their victims to open an executable or click to a site that harbors malware. Here, WatchGuard sees a multitude of spear phishing threats targeting 2010 World Cup ticket holders and related World Cup businesses. * PDF attacks - Recently, vulnerabilities associated with PDF documents have surfaced. Administrators may want to consider using PDF file blocking features for the next 30 days, or until a patch is issued, in order to protect against these new "zero-day" threats. * SEO Poisoning - Search engine optimization (SEO) threats have allowed malicious websites to be highly ranked in search strings relating to the World Cup. As poisoned websites, they pack a malware punch. This can be defeated by administrators using up to date gateway anti-virus and intrusion prevention solutions. * Loss of productivity - Administrators may want to use traffic shaping tools and other forms of content filtering to limit or eliminate access to World Cup related sites and online content. * Social networks - Lastly, WatchGuard warns of malware that may be propagated through popular social networks. Content filtering and file blocking solutions should be tuned to reduce threats related to social networks and the World Cup. |