The Bad News Is...

The bad guys are winning the information security war. F-Secure Corporation, a Finland based security provider of hosted security services and network security software, reported exponential growth in malware in its IT Security Threat Summary for the Second Half of 2008. (see the graphic at the left) The story is big enough that the New York Times picked it up.

According to the F-Secure report, the company is collecting so much data from malware on the internet (F-Secure monitors Internet traffic looking for bad stuff) that its labs are busy “enhancing the system infrastructure to handle the load.” Botnets are on the rise, and their communication and replication capabilities are getting more sophisticated.

Some progress has been made. In October, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decetertified EstDomains as a domain name registrar. EstDomains was the favored domain registrar for online criminals, and was the world’s largest provider of domains used for criminal purposes. Also in October, the FBI arrested 56 individuals and forced the shutdown of DarkMarket, known to be the largest English-language online forum for cyber criminals.

But the criminals seem to stay one step ahead of InfoSec Pros. F-Secure believes that the trend will motivate governments to establish a world-wide Internet policing organization along the lines of Europe’s Interpol. Don't expect a slowdown in malware, scams, and online theft soon, though. It's tough to catch the perpetrators because they’re operating out of nations with lenient or insufficient penalties and enforcement of computer crime.

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