Security.nl, Maarten, social engineering and targeted attacks

Security.nl did a 2-part article interviewing Maarten van Hoorenbeeck. It's in Dutch but you could try Babelfish or Google Translate. Maarten is an expert in targeted attacks and I have enjoyed his various blog articles on the subject. Not forgetting his excellent presentation on 24C3: Crouching Powerpoint, Hidden Trojan. He mentions a lot of points that we discussed before:

• social engineering has become an important part of attacks
• myspace, linkedin etc.... are providing social engineering material
  
• targeted attacks are definitely on the rise
• executive management is becoming a favorite target (spearphising)
• 0-day exploits are being used, especially in office documents (doc, ppt, xls etc)
• Antivirus detection in these cases is very poor
  

Reading the two articles is highly recommended:

1. Hyves helpt hackers bij gerichte aanvallen (security.nl)
   
2. Als dodelijke PDF's je netwerk infiltreren (security.nl)
   

BONUS: Spearphishing is back (SANS ISC)