Review of 2007: Lost in translation
- Article 12 of 33
- SC Magazine, February 2008
Large-scale data breaches across both the private and public sectors dominated the news throughout the year. Rob Buckley looks back.
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Malware writers weren't letting up either. The Italian Job Trojan took on English-speaking malware dominance and infected thousands of servers. The Pentagon (pictured) suffered a hack attack that took 1,500 computers offline - with the finger of blame pointing at the Chinese military. And the FBI revealed around a million IP addresses of botnet-compromised PCs.
Security vendors were spurred into action - and promptly began acquiring each other again: EMC went after authentication provider Verid; SonicWall bought Aventail; PatchLink took over SecureWave; and HP acquired SPI Dynamics. Microsoft released its first ever Vista-only security patch.
Oh yes, and Tony Blair finally stood down as Prime Minister.
JULY
Amazing though it may seem, the world wasn't quite complete until July, with the arrival of the iPhone (in the US; those desperate to be among the first to buy one in the UK had to wait until a cold November night to queue for the launch). Keeping their eyes on the news, malware writers tried to cash in on its release, as well as that of The Simpsons Movie later in the month.
Despite attempts by spammers to use Excel documents to spread their stock tips, it was the security people who proved more innovative - just like their real-world counterparts who managed to track down the perpetrators of attempted bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.
WabiSabiLabi, an eBay-style marketplace for security professionals to buy and sell vulnerabilities, was born. One slightly worrying thing is the fact that one of its founders, Roberto Preatoni, was subsequently arrested in November in connection with an ongoing spying scandal at Telecom Italia.
Google, meanwhile, made a second acquisition, Postini; 3Com announced it was planning an IPO of its TippingPoint subsidiary, and Oracle acquired identity theft and fraud prevention specialist Bharosa.
AUGUST
While Russian submarines were busily trying to claim oil under the North Pole for the first time, spammers turned to.zip files to bypass filters for their pump-and-dump scams, which pushed spam levels up by 30 per cent, according to Sophos.
Two new hacking tools, Ferret and Hamster, showed that nothing short of SSL, two-factor authentication and behavioural analysis software was going to make public WiFi truly secure. Flaws were found in both MSN and Yahoo! Messenger. But the good guys had new technology too, with Websense unveiling an early-warning system for Web 2.0 threats.
Vendor consolidation continued. IBM added Princeton Softech to its portfolio, RSA bought Tablus, Novell swallowed Senforce Technology and Sourcefire acquired ClamAV.
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