Experts at SophosLabs™,
Sophos's global network of virus and spam analysis centers, have
recently assisted the UK government in analysing a series of
Trojans designed to steal confidential and sensitive
information.
According to a report from the National Infrastructure Security
Co-ordination Centre (NISCC), nearly 300 UK government departments
and businesses which are critical to the country's infrastructure
have been the subject of Trojan horse attacks, many reportedly
originating in the Far East.
The Trojans are delivered to target organisations either via
email attachments or through links to websites and can then be used
by remote hackers to steal privileged information and potentially
launch further attacks.
The scale of these attacks appears to be increasing - Sophos has
seen a threefold increase in the number of keylogging Trojans alone
in the last year.
"We see more than a dozen new pieces of malware capable of
stealing highly valuable and sensitive information every day," said
Carole Theriault,
security consultant at Sophos. "Trojans which allow unauthorised
remote access to a computer pose a serious risk to all businesses.
While it's worrying that the UK's critical infrastructure could be
at risk, this also serves as a reminder to all UK businesses that
they must keep their systems secure to avoid confidentiality leaks.
Every computer used for business must be protected with up-to-date
anti-virus software and a firewall."
"Malicious code is increasingly being written not just to cause
a nuisance, but to steal money - whether targeting individual users
of online banking or massive global corporations and government
institutions," continued Theriault.
Earlier this year an attempted hack on the London office of the
Sumitomo Mitsui bank was blamed on keylogging Trojans and just last
month a couple were arrested in London for their alleged
involvement in an industrial espionage scandal targeting Israeli
companies.
Sophos assisted the NISCC with its investigation, analysing the
samples and providing information on how the threats work.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.