The 2010 report shows that the use of spam and phishing as attack methods is down from previous years, but that attacking through "trusted sites" is up. A site like CNN.com or MSNBC.com (just as examples) is compiled from scores of different dynamic URLs delivering national news, local weather, videos, stock quotes and, of course, ads.
"There's a very high probability that the content could include malware, and they're hardly ever blocked," he explains. Blue Coat also reports that criminals are abandoning an older shotgun approach of sending many attacks out, which is easier to spot and thwart, in favor of a more precisely targeted rifle approach. A more limited rifle approach is of shorter duration and is focused on exploiting specific known vulnerabilities. "If they write less, they get longer use out of it and a higher success rate," Clare says.
The Blue Coat study follows another cyber threat report for 2010 from Verizon, which was more focused on threats to enterprise networks. The 2010 Data Breach Investigations Report from the telecommunications company, with assistance from the U.S. Secret Service, noted that 70 percent of data breaches reported in 2009 were traced to external agents, while 48 percent were traced to insiders.
The Verizon report also detailed the ways in which breaches occurred. It says 48 percent involved misuse of network privileges, 40 percent were the result of hacking, 38 percent utilized malware, 28 percent used social network tactics, and 15 percent were the result of physical attacks on IT systems.
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