Commentary
Be Careful With Whom You Chat
Security firm Akonix Systems is warning of a big increase in attacks that target instant messaging systems.Security firm Akonix Systems is warning of a big increase in attacks that target instant messaging systems.According to the vendor, its IM Security Center researchers uncovered 21 new malicious code attacks traveling over IM networks in April, which represents a surge of 162% over the number of March attacks.
A handful of worms topped the list -- ArcServe, IMspread, QVOD, IRCBot, and Tiotua.
More Security Insights
White Papers
- Mobile BI: Actionable Intelligence for the Agile Enterprise
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
Reports
More >>Webcasts
- Outsourcing Security: What Every Potential Cloud Security Customer Should Know
- Maximize ROI with Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds
Akonix also notes a 12% rise in attacks over P2P networks.
While the increase in IM attacks is interesting, it's surprising to me -- considering how much sewage transverses P2P networks -- that there's any room for growth at all in those file sharing networks. The risk is minimal for corporations that have deployed closed instant messaging and collaborative systems. Most, if not all, of these worms target the public IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo, and GoogleTalk. But I wouldn't be quick to connect corporate systems to these public networks.
It's my understanding that most of these threats travel like e-mail worms and users have to click to get infected. So common sense is all that's needed to keep most systems clean: do not to accept messages from screen names you're not familiar with and never, never-ever, accept links from strangers.
A quick look at the list of IM threats uncovered this year, available at the Akonix Web site, lets you see that the vast majority are ranked as low risk.
Aside from banning public IM networks, how does your company protect itself from IM threats?
Related Reading
| To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy. | |
|
|
T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting! |
Subscribe to RSSResource Links
This Week's Issue
Technology Whitepapers
- Creating the Enterprise-Class Tablet Environment - by Yankee Group
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
- The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet's Good Bones - by BlackBerry
- Red Alert: Why Tablet Security Matters - by BlackBerry
- New Visual and Wizard-Driven Paradigms for Exploring Data and Developing Analytic Workflows
Featured Resource
This is your portal to all the news, product information, technical data, and other information related to the topic of computer user authentication and certification. Visit us to find out how to ensure that computer users are who they say they are.
Learn More












