Paperghost chats to ZDNET on the rise of IM Attacks...

"The main and nastiest infections come from the Middle East - we've found a viper nest of hacker dens there," said Boyd. "We've found that lots of hardcore Middle Eastern hacker groups have embraced IM as a launch pad for attacks."

Paperghost, to ZDNET, in a field in Hampshire, yesterday

Okay, so I wasn't in Hampshire. But I did wake up in a field! And what else would we talk about, but the dramatic increase in IM infections across the board, and the part played by FaceTime in trying to stop them. 2005 really blew up for that kind of thing, and the rise of "teh eebil Eastern Hax0rs" continues to march on. A few years back, Chinese hackers really staked a claim for their talent and ability, and the same thing is happening in the Middle-East. The sophistication of their attacks pretty much put everybody into a tailspin - and they'll continue to get better.

What interests me the most - and what wasn't included in the writeup, sadly - is the hacking technique and motivation of East vs West. The guys out East are fairly new to gaming the "Adware system" and so do incredibly stupid and obvious things, which means their money making schemes get flushed a lot quicker than Western guys, who know the system inside out.

So, with that in mind, they basically hammer away at the real black-hat stuff, and do some pretty inventive things. When was the last time some hacker group from the West did anything remotely innovative? You'd have to go to the CWS guys for something even approaching an evil empire.

The scary part is, they will get their heads around the money making, affiliate crunching side of the Adware industry pretty quickly. And when they do, they may not be so inclined to hurl aside the Adware component of a bundle in future. Which means one more headache, both for end-users and the security people looking to protect them. Plus, unlike most Western bundles of Adware / Spyware, the guys out East just can't get the balance right yet. Most (if not all) of their packages just cram as much in as possible, meaning they make no money because the system dies under the load. Western Adware exploiters now know what you can get away with, before smoke starts coming out of the system.

Last point - as the networks out there continue to merge and become increasingly communicative with one another - it will be even easier for worms out there to hop across from, say, AOL to MSN and the like. We've already seen this happen in 2005 - expect this area of infection to really take hold as another way for the bad guys to crowbar their garbage into your PC.

Are we having a wonderful time yet?