Indian Cybercrime Scene Vinoo Thomas Rahul Mohandas Research Lead Research Scientist McAfee Labs Caught In the Cross-Fire

Agenda 2 Knowing the enemy – Who’s at your front door? India in the information age World “Wild” Web – Indian users caught in the cross fire India’s contribution to worldwide Spam, Botnet and DDOS attacks Regional malware Targeted attacks The future

India’s Growing Cyber Population

Why do Indians go online?

What do Indians search online?

Breaking news? Think Malware Malware authors make use of breaking news or popular search terms to ensure a higher return on investment. Popular news items that were misused include: –Searches for Michael Jackson’s death lead to malware –Benazir Bhutto assassination, Bangalore Blasts –Indian celebrities and cricketers

Riskiest Indian Celebrities 7

Popular Indian Sites Compromised to Serve Malware 8

World “Wild” Web Risks on the Web are constantly changing. A site that is safe one day, can be risky the next. It’s not always easy for consumers to identify which site is safe. Even experienced users can be deceived if a trusted site was compromised to serve malware. Thousands of legitimate web sites are compromised every day to serve malware to unsuspecting users. High-profile Indian sites that been compromised to serve malware include banks, security vendors, portals, businesses, as well as educational and government sites.

Payload and impact of users getting infected Bots Backdoors Keyloggers Password Stealers Rogue Antivirus Products Rootkits Payload Infected machine become part of a botnet Abused to send Spam, DDOS, host exploits, and act as launch pad for more attacks. Infected users often have no clue Symptoms Compromised users on a limited bandwidth Internet plan can end up getting a huge bill at the end of month – for no fault of theirs!!

W32/Conficker in India vs. rest of world 11

Conficker world infection map 12

W32/Conficker.worm - Infection Data

Twitter-Facebook Episode Twitter, Facebook, Live Journal, YouTube, Fotki–what do they have in common? Hosted an account of a pro-Georgian blogger who went under the nickname cyxymu (taken after Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, one of Georgia’s pro-Russian breakaway republics). They all suffered a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The attack that was able to take down Twitter for several hours and significantly slow down connectivity to YouTube, Live Journal and Facebook.

India’s Contribution to DDoS India’s Contribution was 8%

India’s Spam Contribution

Phishers target Indian Banks Uses pure Social engineering to deceive users Stolen credentials make its way to underground forums and sold there Commercial Do-It-Yourself Phish kits available for Indian banks Increase in phish s observed during Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode campaign. 17

Malware source code freely available 18

Malware is localized and targeted

Exploits using MSWord, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPad are increasingly popular Multiple zero-day vulnerabilities in office discovered and exploited in Mostly spammed to users or hosted on malicious website Attachment claims to contain sensitive information on Pakistani Air force. Exploits a patched vulnerability in Microsoft ms bulletin. Targeted Attacks: Microsoft Office 20

Targeted Attacks: Adobe PDF 21 >80% users have Adobe Acrobat installed Easy to social engineer user as it’s considered trustworthy Over 5 new exploits released this year alone including zero-days. Most exploits use JavaScript to spray shellcode on heap Heavily deployed in web attack toolkits.

The future

Cyber Crime Altering Threat Landscape 23 Over 1,500,000 unique malware detections in 2008 ⁄1H09 up 150% from 1H08 Malware is heavily obfuscated with packers and compression technologies 80% of threats are financially motivated, up from 50% two years ago with password stealing Trojans being rampant new variants analyzed daily

Why take to cybercrime? Low Risk + High Reward + Opportunity = Safer than traditional crime

25 Cyber Crime – India Statistics –India: 63% of businesses have seen an increase in threats from 2008 to 2009 –India: 40% of businesses in India had an incident that cost an average of $13,543 to fix and recover from and causing revenue loss. –India is the 14th most dangerous domain for web surfing with 3.07% of Indian websites rated Red or Yellow by McAfee Site Advisor.

Summary - What does this mean to you? The malware problem is here to stay – threats are becoming more region specific and sophisticated. Monetary reward is the primary motivation for malware authors. India’s growing cyber population makes an attractive target. Need to improve user education and awareness at grassroots level. 26

McAfee In Action 27 McAfee Initiative to Fight Cybercrime

28 McAfee Security Resources Web Sites –McAfee: –Threat Center: –Submit a Sample: –Scan Your PC: Notifications –Security Advisories: Word of Mouth –Blog: –Podcasts:

Q & A Thank You! Vinoo Thomas Rahul Mohandas