Prevention
- Multivector attacks are becoming increasingly common, increasing security risk. Examples include Nimda (which attacks clients and servers) and sadmind/IIS (which attacks Solaris and Windows).
- IIS worms continue to mutate, and the percentage of unpatched IIS servers is starting to rise. We would not be surprised to see massive distributed DoS attacks using IIS zombies.
- The high vulnerability of default Windows server installations makes finding rogue server installations much more important than ever.
- Broadband subscriptions continue to grow and make it important to ensure that employee laptops are protected when they are plugged into home networks.
- Dont forget about embedded Web servers in printers and appliances.
- SOAP and other Extensible Markup Language remote procedure call mechanisms will lead to new security vulnerabilities next year and beyond. Simple Object Access Protocol over HTTP is designed—deliberately, in fact—to get through normal firewall settings intended to block remote process invocation.