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TECHSPOTLIGHT

Wildfire spread of Malware on the internet

Kaspersky talks about cleaning 'digital pollution' with new techs as world becomes digitised

SHARIER Khan, back from Moscow
THE spread of malicious programmes through the internet has skyrocketed in the last two years as their number exceeded 32 million in 2009 from just two million in 2007. This spread will increase further as it is financially motivated as cyber crime remains extremely profitable and out of reach of the law, according to the gurus of the Kaspersky Lab.
Back in the nineties, when softwareviruses were just nuisance used to be simple. Back then malicious codes were transmitted via files through floppy disks- - took refuge in the rootkit of the PC. By 2000, worms started spreading through emails, and from 2005, Trojans embedded in web pages started to attack unsuspecting Internet users.
"These threats are financially motivated. You may ask why do they make malicious programmes?" says Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Kaspersky Lab Nikolay Grebennikov at a press tour to Kaspersky Lab in Moscow before a group of internationaljournalists on December 4. He answers, "because cyber crime is extremely profitable."
Eugene Kaspersky, chief executive officer, Eugene Buyakin, chief operating officer, and Keith Maskell, vice president of corporate business of Kaspersky Lab, and others spoke at the press event that drew more than 30 journalists from all over the world in Moscow. This event was organised as part of the fastest-growing anti-virus company's aggressive drive to geographically expand its market.
They spoke about increasing security threat in the digital world that will not just affect the internet, but also mobile phone and other everyday technologies whichever involves monetary transaction or business competition in the future.
“People do not see money in the Internet. But actually huge money is going to the wrong hands,” Nikolay Grebennikov notes.
Much of the malwares are hosted in'USA, Europe and some east Asian countrieswith China marked as the world's hottest spot of malware generation.
“Cyber terrorism is on its way. E-espionage is a reality (one business website hires cyber criminals to take down another business website temporarily for financial gains) and cyber wars are coming," Nikolay warns.
Such a scenario calls for widely educating people about the cyber threats, establish a unified global standard to fight cross border cyber threats and keep on developing antimalware technology.
In this regard, Kaspersky Lab developed new technologies to help
fight the ever-complex and evolving malwares. The present tools come with anti-malware protection, control over applications, capability to analyse contents and manageability of the security product.
For instance, Kaspersky offers a “sandbox" utility that gives an environment to allow a suspected software run within it as a test. The suspected software will not affect the operating system when it is run inside the sandbox.
Kaspersky's website “securelist. com" aims at educating people. Its internet-based security solution “Cloud" lets users instandy cross check threat issues related to downloaded programmes.
Kaspersky now has related database of one terabyte containing information about industry leading software, behaviour of software, programme signature etc. Besides it has developed anti malware script hiding technology to combat Trojan embedded webpage and virtual
keyboard to safely enter passwords or codes in webpages.
The core technology team of Kaspersky works in Moscow, while it has outsourced non-core technology to other countries like England or China to attract experts in the field.
Chief Executive Officer of Kaspersky, Eugene Kaspersky further illustrates how the digital world has changed our world and why we should be cautious about "digital pollution”.
"There was a time where there was no electricity. And when electricity came, our lives had changed permanently. Similarly, once there was no internet. Now with internet, our lives have changed perma-nendy,”hesaid.
“Now younger generation don't buy 0aperbooks, CDs or DVD. I believe they will not use paper books. They will use digital data. The world has completely changed. Digital life has changed the world
like electricity did," says Eugene Kaspersky.
"Unfortunately, there will always be bad guys in this change. The use the system for their needs. In digital world, every e-person (Internet users) can be under attack. Every business is under cyber criminals and every nation and the global economy is at risk," says he.
The good news is nations have started to understand this risk. But the bad news is cyber threats come from beyond the borders.
"The reality is that we have become dependent on the Internet. The remotest African and Amazonian communities are now dependent on the Internet for their health services. Imagine, now if bad guys control 10 million PCs (with selfinstalled Trojans), they can stop the Internet. Technically it is possible,” said Kaspersky.
But users don't take internet security seriously because they don't see the whole picture. Being naive about cyber crime, they are more vocal about freedom in the Internet.
Till now, businesses like banks look at losses caused by cyber crime as a cost of business loss. And governments have other priority things to worry. Internet security is not a priority to them.
Popular operating systems like Windows are flexible and insecure.
Here, security means every application for the OS must be trusted with a digital signature obtained through a certification process. But it is not possible for all software to get certification, as that would reduce the number of applications and OS. This is why Windows have more software than Apple OS.
Supporting flexible software over too secured software, Eugene points out, “remember IBM OS or Novell? We they disappeared.”
He adds, if Apple or Blackberry does not change their mindset about their OS, they would also be affected.
As computers have taken over our lives, people are unwittingly dependent on a large number of Oss. "You will see different OS everywhere- in phones, aircrafts, cars and any other electronic appliances," he said describing the extend of risk of being dependent on computers.
Eugene terms the threats as "digital pollution", saying, “it only depends on us the internet security industry to protect the digital world from this pollution." And JCaspersky Lab commits to fight this battle in three ways by high quality products and services, educate everyone about the cyber threats and continue to hammer on developing cyber police through cooperation with others.