Cisco survey: Cybercriminals becoming more business savvy

Hiring quality assurance testers, employing botnets to develop, distribute malicious code

Cybercriminals are becoming more business savvy in their efforts to profit by worming into business networks to steal passwords and other sensitive data, according to a recent security survey from Cisco. In this report from colleague Tim Greene, he explains that the Cisco survey finds crackers selling their malware start-up kits online are hiring quality-assurance testers for their malicious code, as well as botnets for quick distribution.

The evil doers are also profiting by selling start-up kits to other cybercriminals. A Zeus Trojan kit for stealing login data is available for $700, Greene reports.  

The efforts are as impressive as they are dastardly: Cisco for the first time is passing out awards for the most prolific infections. The Most Audacious Criminal Operation honor went to Zeus, which has infected an estimated 4 million machines and includes a versatile botnet that could be used for a variety of attacks.

The Most Notable Criminal Innovation is Koobface, Greene reports, a worm that lures users to a YouTube video that encourages Flash player updates. The updates they download are actually the worm that gathers sensitive information from infected machines.

Koobface is an example of a worm that exploits social network sites, which account for 2% of workplace Web traffic, the Cisco survey states. So beware the social networker at work...

More from Cisco Subnet:

• Cisco rival Brocade for sale?
• HP blade counters Cisco security approach
• What's next for Cisco after Tandberg deal?
• Manly Man IOS Features
• Cisco Releases IOS 15.0
• Cisco training and network design books up for grabs in October

Win great stuff from Cisco Subnet Like e-mail? Subscribe to the Cisco Alert newsletter.
Like RSS readers? Subscribe to the Cisco Subnet RSS feed

Follow all Cisco Subnet bloggers on Twitter.
Follow Jim Duffy on Twitter

• Cisco
• cybercrime
• security
• survey