Cybercrime Scenario Growing Worse

As per the statement of Dave DeWalt, CEO, McAfee, cybercrime is really getting worse, according to the news published by GCN on April 30, 2010. DeWalt's statement followed the detection of over 34 Million malicious code samples by McAfee in 2009.

Security experts observed several sophisticated cyber attacks in 2009. One of those attacks were Aurora attacks, wherein anywhere between 100 and 150 firms were hacked in 2009. Aurora attack refers to a well-coordinated attack that involves a computer code exploiting the vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer in order to take over PCs. This attack is further extended to download and stimulate malware within the computer.

After these Aurora attacks, a zero-day Internet Explorer flaw and exploit were brought into use together with some unidentified malware.

Besides this, last year several websites were attacked by cybercriminals by means of malware. Security firm Websense identified nearly 40,000 websites in June 2009 that appeared to have been hijacked through malicious JavaScript code that redirected surfers to a bogus Google Analytics website. Later on, the surfers were forwarded onto a website that looked to exploit vulnerabilities in Firefox or Internet Explorer to infect their computers with malware.

DeWalt claimed the assaults as "alarming" due to the duration of time for which the malware remained in action and also as the target was apparently important intellectual property, like the source code.

He further noted that although these attacks were highly coordinated and sophisticated, they weren't the most perfectly implemented attacks. In fact, they were flawed.

Unfortunately, malicious attacks are on the way to further surge this year, warned McAfee. Giving the reasons for the anticipated growth, Dave Marcus, security research director at McAfee, said that the increasing popularity of social networking sites and growing Web 2.0 culture have made it easier for cybercriminals to garner personal details required to prepare an attack, as per the news published by CBSNEWS on April 22, 2010.

Related article: Cheburgen.a: A New Email Worm

» SPAMfighter News - 5/11/2010