Increase in Broadband Use in NZ Brings Trouble

Just like other countries, New Zealand is also susceptible to cyber attacks, says Rogan Mallon, principal systems engineer at Symantec, NZ. According to him, countries become vulnerable targets with the adoption of broadband. This brings a rise in attacks rates.

The growing use of "fuzzers" poses another risk. Earlier, security vulnerability researchers found flaws and vulnerabilities on the basis of manual data input and analyses. But today, they use 'fuzzers', automated devices and mechanisms that help researchers to perform this task. However, these fuzzers can cause problems despite of their immense utility.

The problem is that they can be used to detect 'false positives' susceptibilities that are not necessarily harmful. This could create a deluge in the vulnerabilities reports.

New Zealand, presently, is witnessing a growth stage in broadband and this increases the rate of attacks. Botnets are also likely to go up as the number of 'bot networks' is directly linked to the amount of systems connected.

In New Zealand, there is a high rate of bot infections since it is directly connected to the extensive use of broadband in this country. Broadband users are more susceptible to attacks than dial-up users because the former often let their home PCs connected to the Internet for long hours, whereas dial-up users go online only when they want to. When the home PCs is left online for long durations, the malicious traffic strikes them and converts them into 'bots'. The two most popularly used broadband links in NZ are ADSL and Cable, which pass harmful traffic through the network of bots' ISP.

As the demand for consumer broadband and traditional base of machines increases, , a large number of machines are permanently connected to 'high volume' Internet. Some of these lack proper security, which opens scope for attackers to compromise them and send spam through them.

Based on such experiences, the new broadband systems have additional safety precautions which users may not be fully aware of. These securities need to employ while using an 'always-on high-speed' Internet connectivity. Although security awareness is improving, education still remains a big challenge.

Related article: Increasing Security Breaches in Canada Causing Loss of $637,000 a year

» SPAMfighter News - 10/7/2006