The headline, "
Experts: Russians Planning New Cyberattack" caught my eye. The title of the article made me assume that the artilce was refering to "THE Russians" as in the Russian government especially since Putin recently promised
increased Russian military spending and spying. However, if you read down to the details, it is not the Russian government and whatever threat may have existed is likely neutralized:
Quote:
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The Web sites all had Italian-sounding names and Italian content, but actually resided in a hosting facility in Germany.. the iFrames are believed to have been deliberately inserted by the owners of the Web sites to snare unsuspecting visitors as part of a porn-for-pay scam.
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Oh, so it was actually involving Italian websites, hosted in Germany, and it was a p0rn scam, not exactly the Russian cyberattack that was boasted in the headline. More from the article:
Quote:
Researchers at Sophos, headquartered in Abingdon, England, have also reported a rise in Web-based malware from Russia. The company's experts noted in a report about the top 10 Web and e-mail-borne threats for July 2007 that the number of malware-infected Web pages hosted by Russia has increased substantially between June and July, jumping from 3.5 to 14.7 percent...
The Sophos report put China at the top of the list with 49.8 percent and the United States in second place with 21.8 percent.
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So the Russians are planning a cyberattack, but Chinese and American websites are way ahead of the Russians? Again, this is not the impending cyber-threat from Russia (at least not specifically) that the article announced. I am surprised that the article did not label China as the cyber-threat due to the recent toy, tire, food, and toothpaste recalls.
Granted, the article does mention a large cache of previously undiscovered malware tools, but those do not necessarily indicate a pending cyberattack. As the artilce does point out, the malware seems to be scam related rather than anything that would cripple the internet. The discovery, in fact, it may mean that a cyberattack was avoided because now the security companies can program their anti-virus tools to catch this set of malware. Therefore, they should be more concerned about the malware that has not been found instead of worrying about the known malware. To me, this sounds like security companies trying to scare people into buying their products.
Related article:
I have previously posted that
Russian websites are more likely to be dangerous according to McAfee.
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