Cisco warns of growing threat from cybercrime collaborators, insiders

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), in its regular report on trends in cybercrime, highlighted three security threats today that have been growing appreciably in recent months: the speed with which criminals are capitalizing on world events, growing collaboration among cybercriminals and a growing threat from disgruntled former employees.

Cybercriminals are increasingly taking lessons from the business world in terms of maximizing their effectiveness, according to Pat Peterson, Cisco Fellow. Recent events have demonstrated how organized and efficient they’ve become: Less than 24 hours after the news of Michael Jackson’s death first broke, spammers had sent more than 5 billion spam emails, reaching a peak of more than 5% of global spam -- a level of speed and responsiveness that Cisco executives argued rivaled the media industry’s race to mobilize in pursuit of the story.

“Criminals’ business sophistication is one of the biggest changes [seen lately],” Peterson said. “A lot of these things [they’re doing], you would learn if you went to Harvard Business School or Cisco’s training [programs].”

Criminals have been methodically targeting the customers of regional banks, Cisco said, calling consumers within each bank’s area code and phone prefix and pretending to be that bank, asking users to give up their account information in a new approach to the old phishing trick. “The phishing is not the interesting element,” Peterson said. “It’s how they microtargeted it. It flies under the radar because they’re hitting such small organizations -- about two a week.”

And just as in the legitimate business world, criminals are forming joint ventures with other criminals, collaborating and combining their strengths like never before, Cisco said. For example, the equipment vendor discovered that the creators of the Conficker worm, which infected an estimated 9 million computers starting late last year, had established an agreement with the makers of the spambot, Waledac, to help monetize eachother’s efforts in a partnership of product and distribution. Cisco discovered this when the company introduced both entities to its malware lab and later discovered the two had “mated” overnight, spawning malware and scareware, Peterson said.