Cyber Crime – A Fast Maturing Profession

As per Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report (SIR), cyber crime is emerging as a mature profession. The company collected the information from nearly 500 Million computers worldwide to prepare its report on the global online threats.

Desmond Nair, Head of Microsoft South Africa's Server Business, states that the report also highlights that attackers are driven by the financial gains and they (attackers) act alone very rarely. For instance - malware authors seldom launch attacks themselves, but work with others in the underground online market for buying and selling malware kits and botnet access, as reported by mybroadband on June 24, 2010.

According to the report, "bot-herders" occupy the central position of professional online threats. They build a network among the compromised machines to form a dark version of Cloud Computing network that provides cyber criminal a number of illegal services to propagate malware and spam.

Nair further added that the report contained compelling and chilling evidence of rising sophistication level of techniques employed by cyber criminals. These criminals also packaged their online threats for selling them to others and targeted home user & enterprises differently.

The report also highlights that spam networks of malware-corrupt computers and botnets, which could be controlled from a remote place by attackers, are the main source of spam sent today. In order to measure the impact of botnets on the spam landscape, Microsoft's Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) tracks spam messages sent from IP addresses associated with the familiar botnets. In H2 2009, the top five botnets were responsible for over 94% of the total botnet spam.

Besides, the latest report notes that spam messages related to advance-fee fraud (so-called "419 scams") and gambling soared emphatically in H2 2009, while most of the other categories remained stable in terms of percentage.

Interestingly, breach incidents have the possibility of occurring twice because of users' negligence; for instance - stolen, lost or missing equipments. This indicates to the fact that IT professionals could reduce the impact of majority of potential breaches by adopting established protective measures.

Related article: Cyber Child abuser Sentenced To Imprisonment

» SPAMfighter News - 7/3/2010