Key findings in Volume V of Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report include a staggering number of new vulnerabilities, totalling 2 636 last year, or seven per day.
This is a 2% increase over 2002 - but the modest figure is explained partially by the trend to keep vulnerability details private, says Rob Clyde, VP and CTO, Symantec. There was an 81% increase from 2001 to 2002.
Clyde adds that 70% of these were easily exploitable, an increase over the year before when 60% were easily exploitable (meaning no exploit was required or an exploit was readily available). The time between discovery and exploitation of vulnerabilities is shrinking to the point where, for an increasing number, this will happen on the same day.
One attack trend discerned by the report, which makes use of attack data from 20 000 devices in 180 countries, is that critical systems and businesses with significant financial resources experienced a relatively high severe attack rate in 2003. The financial services, healthcare, and power and energy sectors were among the hardest hit.
Almost one-third of all attacking systems targeted the vulnerability exploited by Blaster and its successors. In addition, attackers and blended threats increasingly targeted backdoors left by other attackers and worms.
The increase in blended threats (making up 54% of the top 10 submissions) means malicious code is on the increase, says Symantec. The Netsky variants and Bagle worm were recent examples of these.
The number of worms and W32 viruses in the last six months of 2003 increased two-and-a-half times over the same period in 2002. And in the six months to the end of last year, the number of malicious code submissions that presented a threat to confidential data increased by 519% over the first half of 2003.
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