Pingree on Security

I was interviewed on my thoughts for the security market and the article was published on Infoworld.

Check out the article here

lpingree Security

A little off my normal topic today, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about security companies and investments. I’m not sure how many of you invest in security technology companies but I wanted to go over some of the recent gains seen in security technology industry. Some of the numbers are pretty shockingly high.

Security Stock Performance since March 10th

MFE – McAfee +44.8%

SYMC – Symantec +25.83%

CHKP – Checkpoint Software +16.57%

ARST – Arcsight +62.9%

JNPR – Juniper Networks +90.3%

VRSN – Verisign, Inc. +16.06%

COMS – 3Com Corporation +130.05%

CSCO – Cisco Systems +43.1%

FYI – I own shares of MFE, JNPR (for purposes of full disclosure).

lpingree Personal investment, Security, stocks

Reading over the news from companies such as McAfee and Symantec lately about how search engines have quite a few malicious websites listed for official search terms made me ponder.  I wonder if malicious code writers are using http://trends.google.com in order to pick the best suited keywords. I imagine it would be something like this:

1. Hacker goes out to http://trends.google.com

2. Hacker grabs top 50 list of search terms (paste into notepad)

3. Builds their malicious spyware etc

4. Hacker creates a website with a free hosting provider or a provider in a country that does not prosecute computer crimes to the extent we do.

5. Hacker places content on the website customized specifically with the top 50 keywords into the content along with malware/spyware.

6. Unsuspecting users get the code installed when the site comes up in search results.

lpingree Security google, hackers, malicious, search terms, trends

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aHtly5QjUYzo&refer=home

Its a lengthy article, but if you have the time to read it, its a very interesting story. It reminded me that if you were working over your security budgets, this would be a very interesting article to point out to your executive about organized crime to help justify your spend.

lpingree Security article, internet security, mafia, news, Security

http://us.mcafee.com/en-us/local/docs/most_dangerous_searchterm_us.pdf

A snippet of the top 5 terms:

“Lyrics 26.3% 5.1%
Free 21.3% 7.3%
Web 13.9% 2.1%
Gear, Gadgets and Games 12.5% 2.7%
Olympics 12.4% 2.1%”

A snippet of the top 5 countries:

“Czech Republic 14.2% 2.4%
Finland 13.1% 2.3%
Chile 13.0% 2.2%
France 12.8% 2.1%
Spain 12.6% 1.8%

”

lpingree Security mcafee, phishing, risk, Security, website security