ClearSky Cyberdefense Forum

The Internet Security Threat Report provides an overview and analysis of the year in global threat activity. The report is based on data from the Global Intelligence Network, which Symantec’s analysts use to identify, analyze, and provide commentary on emerging trends in attacks, malicious code activity, phishing, and spam. Here are some highlights from the threat landscape of 2011:

• Symantec blocked a total of over 5.5 billion malware attacks in 2011, an 81% increase over 2010.
• Web based attacks increased by 36% with over 4,500 new attacks each day.
• 403 million new variants of malware were created in 2011, a 41% increase of 2010.
• SPAM volumes dropped by 13% in 2011 over rates in 2010.
• 39% of malware attacks via email used a link to a web page.
• Mobile vulnerabilities continued to rise, with 315 discovered in 2011.

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/b-istr_main_report_2011_21239364.en-us.pdf

The idea, from security engineers at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, is to slow down internet traffic, including malicious data, to give networks time to deal with attacks. To do this, when a cyber attack has been sensed, an algorithm sends hyper-speed signals accelerating ahead of the malicious data packets to mobilise defences.

“Slowing the malicious traffic by just a few milliseconds will let the hyper-speed commands activate sophisticated network-defence mechanisms,” says Sujeet Shenoi at Tulsa (International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, DOI: 10.1016/j.ijcip.2012.02.001).

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21756-bullet-time-to-stop-cyber-attacks-on-power-grids.html