Cybercrime: 'making small business' safer

Today's cybercriminals take smaller steps and focus on more targeted attacks to avoid detection and gain more profits.

Symantec's "Internet Security Threats" report released yesterday said in the second half of 2005, cyber criminals had shifted their focus from widespread attacks to break through firewalls and Network routers to target are desktop computers and web applications through the method of stealing personal financial information.

Statistics in Symantec's report also show that threats to the security of virus, computer worms and trojans that steal users' confidential information account for 80% of the Top 50 software. most toxic. This number has increased by 6% compared to the figure of the first 6 months of 2005.

Online scams such as phishing attacks trick users into revealing confidential information such as passwords, credit card information and other financial information also increased sharply.

Statistics show that between July 1 and December 31, 2005, for every 119 electronic messages processed, there was one phishing email. This figure has pushed the average phishing email level to 7.92 million per day - 2.22 million more than the number of the first six months.

Vincent Weafer - senior director of Symantec Security Response - said hackers are gradually shifting from spreading computer viruses or worms that can infect hundreds of thousands of different computers to focus on attacks. smaller scale work.

Vincent believes that cybercriminals do not want to "fight" with security companies' security response teams around the world with "famous" attacks that now want to attack the system secretly. of more users.

Evidence for this, Vincent asserts, are the viruses that appear when the emergence of the popular press pages like the time of the Blaster worm has decreased significantly.

" Instead of sending a computer worm capable of infecting thousands of desktops, criminals are organizing smaller but more dangerous attacks. Simply because they want to break into. Secret user system . "

The "Internet Security Threats" report also shows threats from "bot" network systems - the network used to organize attacks - is growing rapidly. Cyber ​​criminals often create this tool by illegally taking control of a large number of different computers.

Every day Symantec lists a total of 1,402 denial-of-service attacks using botnets - a 51% increase over the previous report.

China is gradually becoming a major "source" of bot attacks when the pace of broadband network development in the country is in the process of strong growth.