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A singling out of lucrative targets drove cyber crime to a higher level in 2008 than in the previous four years combined, at a rising ecological and financial cost to the public. The collective verdict was arrived at yesterday by a series of studies from computer security firms, which each measured the impact internet crime had across the world last year. Analysis by Verizon said more electronic records were raided in 2008 than every year combined since 2004, mainly due to hackers improving their planning, targeting and R&D. Businesses fell victim to the biggest cyber crimes ever, during a year when nine out of ten attacks were organised, and 93% of the 285m records breached were in financial services. Most of the breaches did not require difficult or expensive preventive controls, though were more damaging where IT managers, rather than rank-and-file staff, had made mistakes. In fact, just 17% of the breaches were due to “highly sophisticated” attacks, Verizon said, but they accounted for 95% of their total, indicating “hackers know where and what to target.” The report coincided with research published by Symantec, which found that stolen credit card details changed hands online last year for as little as 4pence. Ads to obtain such details leapt 32%, up from 21% in 2007, while the asking price for a person’s full identity came in at 50pence, shows the firm’s 2008 Internet Security Threat Report. It added that spam email increased by 192% across the internet, to 349.6bn unwanted messages in 2008, compared with 119.6bn in the previous year. Cue a new way to look at the problem by McAfee: the anti-virus firm found unwanted email, which now accounts for 80% of the world’s total, sucks 33bn kilowatt-hours of electricity – the same as powering 2.4m homes – every year. Stopping spam at its source, as well using filtering technology, was recommended to tackle the cyber pest’s “immense financial, personal and environmental impact” on individuals and companies. Apr 16, 2009 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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