IM Attacks Increasingly Malevolent

By Dave Nixon

According to Akonix, a merchant of messaging security systems, unremitting attacks on instant messaging systems grew more sophisticated and dangerous in January.

The company tracked 14 new attacks on IM systems in January, finding that although the figure was comparatively low, the attacks are improving at targeting users.

IM attacks are a comparatively new trend, but have developed drastically in number in recent months. In July Akonix said the amount of threats over the past 12 months increased 78 percent on the previous year.

New IM worms acknowledged in January include MSNChristmas, MSNVB, Perin and Raiodin, Akonix said.

Perin is one of the most evil of the assortment, spreading via a link to contacts on MSN and AIM networks and installing a backdoor server on contaminated machines.

Akonix vice president of marketing Don Montgomery stated “Although the number of IM attacks in January 2008 is somewhat low, we are continuing to see an increase in the intensity of malicious online activity.”

The past year has seen the emergence of multi-stage IM attacks, delivering malicious code that consecutively downloads other code, he said.

Another propensity is two-stage attacks, where the second phase is the downloading of a Trojan that lingers for users to log into specific banking sites to activate a key-logging program, Montgomery said.

In addition, there are multi-vector attacks where a malicious URL may be distributed by IM but spread using email or enter via email and spread over IM.

Additionally assaults focused on consumer services AOL, MSN and Yahoo, are starting to cross networks, Akonix said.

Attacks over peer-to-peer networks are also a rising predicament, Akonix said, with 14 new P2P attacks surfacing in January.

A report by network monitoring vendor Tiversa last year found contractors and US government employees were distributing hundreds of secret documents on peer-to-peer networks.