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IBM has released the results from its annual 2009 X-Force Trend and Risk Report. The report's findings show that existing threats such as phishing and document format vulnerabilities have continued to expand, even as clients have generally made strides to improve security.
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The X-Force report reveals three main threats that demonstrate how in 2009 attackers increasingly targeted people using the Internet for monetary gain or data theft. The appearance of new malicious Web links has skyrocketed globally in the past year. Phishing attacks or sending email that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organization, also increased dramatically in the second half of 2009. It surpassed the monthly volume seen in 2008, with activity coming from countries that had not previously been in the game. Vulnerability disclosures for document readers and editors also continued to soar.
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“Despite the ever-changing threat landscape, this report indicates that overall, vendors are doing a better job responding to security vulnerabilities,” said Chandrasekhar Balasubramanian, Country Manager – Infrastructure Risk Management Services, IBM India/South Asia. “However, attackers have clearly not been deterred, as the use of malicious exploit code in web sites is expanding at a dramatic rate.”
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The X-Force research team has been cataloguing, analyzing and researching vulnerability disclosures since 1997. With more than 48,000 security vulnerabilities catalogued, it has the largest vulnerability database in the world. This unique database helps X-Force researchers to understand the dynamics that make up vulnerability discovery and disclosure.
