p2pnet - rss feed: 2003 was bad -
This year should go down as one of the worst ever for online security as hackers and spammers, "repeatedly demonstrated just how easy it is to use the latest software security holes, worms and viruses to attack businesses and trick unwitting Internet users into divulging their personal and financial information".
And 2004 could be worse.
That’s how Brian Krebs sums it up in Online Financial Crime Headed From Bad to Worse article in the Washington Post here.
And he’s dead right, mentioning the latest - potentially deadly - flaw in Microsoft’s IE6 as an example.
"We’re seeing a huge shift away from ‘recreational’ hacking to hacking for profit," he quotes ecurity researcher Joe Stewart as saying.
"Mostly this involves hijacking end-user Windows systems for use in spam, fraud or just direct marketing."
The evolution of the Mimail virus in 2003 shows how criminals are increasingly focusing their work on financial scams, Krebs goes on.
"Mimail first surfaced in August as a relatively harmless but fast-spreading bug," he says. "The next four variants were apparently designed by spammers to attack a variety of spam blacklists - online databases of suspected spammers that many Internet service providers and big corporations use to shield recipients from junk mail.
"But Mimail soon morphed into an e-mail virus that urged users of the online payment service PayPal to update their credit card information via a Web page that closely mimicked the design of the eBay subsidiary’s member services page."
Stay tuned …
