2007 Witnessed Exceptional Growth in Hi-tech Crimes

Becoming a cyber criminal was much easier in 2007, as per the security experts. They reached to this conclusion after analyizing the progess made by hi-tech groups in last 12 months.

According to Paul Henry, Vice President of technology evangelism at security solutions provider Secure Computing, cyber crooks are increasingly using sophisticated techniques to accomplish their tasks. Hence, it becomes very difficult to remain protected from their attacks, reported by BBC.

The economic support to these groups has also increased. Today, everything which is used in cyber crimes, from virus writing kits to spam-spawning zombies, is easily available on rent.

Security professionals worldwide have acknowledged that easy access of these tools is helping criminals a lot. Consequently, the methods criminals employ to steal data and catch PC users are becoming more advanced.

As reported by BBC NEWS on January 2, 2008, Joe Telafici, Vice President of Operations for McAffee's Avert Labs, said that 2007 was a fairly interesting year as cyber crime continued to enhance their security attacks.

As per Mr. Telafici, some attacks like phishing runs are about pilfering money from accounts of Internet users who use the web for a number of activities. Even more inoffensive attacks are motivated with cash in mind.

Trojans concealed under guise of advertisements were designed to attack on home personal computers to steal the information of users that could be given for rent to spammers and cyber criminals.

Paul Henry, Vice President, technology evangelism, Secure Computing, said that hi-tech criminals' first choice was the botnet which comprises of all the tools that are used to hijack home PCs, reported BBC

He also said that botnets are one of the most advanced and well-organized tools. Cyber criminals have reached to a level where they are making smaller botnets from bigger ones.

In 2007, news of creation of one of the biggest botents made headline. Spam e-mails that were created to fool people who were looking for information on European storms were the sources of the name to the network.

The biggest search engine Google also became a victim of web hijacking campaign in which malicious websites came up in search results on using simple terms like "charity".

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 1/11/2008