IT Vigilance Urged To Fight Malware, Bots, Root Kits
Stronger authentication, better firewalls and use of the latest software are needed to battle an expanding Internet threat environment.
At least that is the view of Microsoft’s David Aucsmith, architect and CTO, Security Business & Technology Unit. Malware, spam, phishing, spyware, bots and root kits are raking in big bucks and fighting them effectively is a huge challenge, Aucsmith said in a presentation at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle Wednesday.
“We’ve seen an explosion of criminal enterprise moving onto the Net in the last 18 months or so,” he said in describing hacker motivation trends. “It’s no longer just for kicks. It is for making money.”
Aucsmith offered a bleak prognosis for the future of spam, suggesting that it’s become so profitable for the spammers that there’s no end to it in sight. Among other ills, spam serves as a gateway for artificially generated web traffic, phishing, identity theft and credential theft. “People are making a lot of money with spam,” he said flatly.