Dealing with advanced threats

"Advanced" is often code for "attacks we're not good at stopping." Some are incredibly complex, some just well-targeted. This guide tackles the gamut of hacker creativity, from "did the homework" to "blew the doors off."

Introduction

There have always been sophisticated hackers, just not all that many of them. Now there seem to be more than ever, and they have branched out in numerous directions to find different, novel avenues of attack. This Essential Guide takes on what's become a genuinely essential task: keeping up with each new class of attack as it's created. Here's a look at the threats to embedded systems, to the mobile device and app ecosystem, and to all manner of stealthy attacks on conventional systems that are harder than ever to detect before significant damage has been done.

ANSWER:
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Trends
Trends and detection
Even though attacks are becoming more sophisticated, sometimes involving teams of dozens of experts crafting inventive malware and other malicious tools, the pace of "innovation" doesn't seem to have slowed much, even with the added complexity. We've taken several looks at what elements in the cat-and-mouse game of threats are currently shifting the fastest.

DNS, DDoS, and More
Recent examples
Emerging threats, not surprisingly, make headline news. Or at least, they do when they finally are detected. Some of the newer threats of late have been noticeable from Day 1, of course, as they have focused on various approaches to denial of service (DoS). Of course distributed DoS isn't the only game in town, and we've seen, to take one example, very interesting twists on the traditional man-in-the-middle attack.

Locking Down
Emerging defenses
As we become aware of new kinds of attacks, inventive minds turn their attention to mitigation. Here are some examples of what's brewing to help security professionals deal with mobile, DDoS and other attacks.