The Release of Sage 3 – The Globalization of Malware

Today at Avert Labs, we released the third edition of Sage – our security journal. As always, we strive to be a bit different with our content in Sage. A little provocative, new trends, new ideas… And this issue is no different.

In this issue we look at the growing trend of localization in malware and threats. Cybercriminals are increasingly crafting attacks in multiple languages and are exploiting popular local applications to maximize their profits. Cybercrooks have become extremely deft at learning the nuances of the local regions and creating malware specific to each country. They’re not just skilled at computer programming””they’re skilled at psychology and linguistics, too.

We examined global malware trends in this report, titled “One Internet, Many Worlds.” The report is based on data compiled by our international security experts and examines the globalization of threats and the unique threats in different countries and regions. In the report, we detail the following trends and conclusions:

Ӣ Sophisticated malware authors have increased country-, language-, company-, and software-specific attacks
Ӣ Cyberattackers are increasingly attuned to cultural differences and tailor social engineering attacks accordingly
Ӣ Cybercrime rings recruit malware writers in countries with high unemployment and high levels of education such as Russia and China
Ӣ Cybercriminals take advantage of countries where law enforcement is lax
Ӣ Around the world, malware authors are exploiting the viral nature of Web 2.0 and peer-to-peer networks
Ӣ More exploits than ever before are targeted at locally popular software and applications

Download Sage 3