Hacking: It's Nothing Personal, It's Just Business
Earlier I posted on the evolving software market for attackers, complete with the kinds of upgrades and service support you'd expect from a legitimate vendor. Today we get more evidence of the business models driving hacking and attacking.
SecurityFocus is reporting this morning on a threat to Mac users from a Trojan that is spreading as codec needed to view pornography. This isn't a new threat, it's been around for Windows for some time, but the more interesting part of the article comes at the end when the author gets to the economics driving hacker's choice of targets.
The arrival of a serious attempt to attack the Mac has been widely predicted by security professionals. Since early last year, flaw finders have focused on Apple's operating system, but serious attacks have been lacking. Online fraudsters have increasingly focused on turning illicit access into cash, which makes vast majority of computers running Windows a far more natural target.
A recent study supports the theory that marketshare appears to matter a great deal to financially motivated hackers. The study found a selection of malicious Web sites only focused on attacking Internet Explorer, not Mozilla's Firefox browser, despite the fact that the open-source software had twice as many vulnerabilities disclosed since its release.
The attackers are looking at market share as much as vendors. Many have long argued that Mac fans are a bit too smug about their feelings of security superiority over Windows users. Now we have some evidence it isn't always the quality of the our operating systems and our applications that makes the big difference. This is not good news for Microsoft, obviously. Who would want to buy a car that is difficult to lock and is most likely to be targeted by thieves?
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