In particular, phishing attacks, which
typically use fake versions of bank websites to grab login
details of customers, boomed during 2004.
Web portal Lycos Europe reported a 500% increase in the
number of phishing e-mail messages it was catching.
The Anti-Phishing Working group reported that the number
of phishing attacks against new targets was growing at
a rate of 30% or more per month.
Those who fall victim to these attacks can find that
their bank account has been cleaned out or that their
good name has been ruined by someone stealing their identity.
This change in the ranks of virus writers could mean
the end of the mass-mailing virus which attempts to spread
by tricking people into opening infected attachments on
e-mail messages.
"They are not an efficient way of spreading viruses,"
said Mr Hogan.
"They are very noisy and they are not technically
challenging."
The opening months of 2004 did see the appearance of
the Netsky, Bagle and MyDoom mass mailers, but since then
more surreptitious viruses, or worms, have dominated.
Remote control
Mr Hogan said worm writers were more interested in recruiting
PCs to take part in "bot nets" that can be used
to send out spam or to mount attacks on websites.
In September Symantec released statistics which showed that
the numbers of active "bot computers" rose from
2,000 to 30,000 per day.
Thanks to these "bot nets", spam continued
to be a problem in 2004. Anti-spam firms report that,
in many cases, legitimate e-mail has shrunk to less than
30% of messages.
Part of the reason that these "bot nets" have
become so prevalent, he said, was due to a big change
in the way that many viruses were created.
In the past many viruses, such as Netsky, have been the
work of an individual or group.
By contrast, said Mr Hogan, the code for viruses such
as Gaobot, Spybot and Randex were commonly held and many
groups work on them to produce new variants at the same
time.
The result is that now there are more than 3,000 variations
of the Spybot worm.
"That's unprecedented," said Mr Hogan. "What
makes it difficult is that they are all co-existing with
each other and do not exist in an easy to understand chronology."
Moving target
The emergence of the first proper virus for mobile phones
was also seen in 2004.
In the past, threats to smart phones have been largely theoretical
because the viruses created to cripple phones existed only
in the laboratory rather than the wild.
In June, the Cabir virus was discovered that can hop
from phone to phone using Bluetooth short-range radio
technology.
Also released this year was the Mosquito game for Symbian
phones which surreptitiously sends messages to premium
rate numbers, and in November the Skulls Trojan came to
light which can cripple phones.
On the positive side, Finnish security firm F-Secure
said that 2004 was the best-ever year for the capture,
arrest and sentencing of virus writers and criminally-minded
hackers.
In total, eight virus writers were arrested and some
members of the so-called 29A virus writing group were
sentenced.
One high-profile arrest was that of German teenager Sven
Jaschen who confessed to be behind the Netsky and Sasser
virus families.
