|
Rogue countries, militaries, terror or extremist groups are not the only ones who pose a cyber threat. Large corporations are now heavily targeted by cyber criminals and organized crime. Attacks targeting executives, hacking of emails and even cell phones are just a few of the cyber weapons used by these criminals. The Internet has transformed the criminal enterprise to a high tech, stealthy, global organization. Identity theft, money laundering, online fraud, theft of intellectual property, counterfeiting of CDs, software, sex trade and other products are being sold online in record volumes and are all common activities for cyber criminals. By far the largest area of criminal activity is the sale of counterfeit products. On expert in the security field refers to eBay as eFence and its sister company PayPal as eLaunder, thus illustrating his opinions on the legitimacy of many of the transactions. Last year a French court order eBay to pay 38.6 million euros ($60.8 million USD) in damages to the French luxury goods company LVMH (Louis Vuitton); this is the latest in the legal battle over the sale of counterfeit goods on eBay's site. During the legal proceeding it was stated that an estimated 90% of the Louis Vuitton bags and Dior perfumes sold on eBay are fakes. eBay is appealing the ruling. Need more proof? In the 2007 National Money Laundering Strategy it stated that several FBI field offices reported the laundering of millions of dollars derived from Internet extortion and fraud schemes through MSBs (Money Services Businesses) such as Western Union, PayPal, e-gold Limited, and other online payment systems. These instances clearly shows the magnitude of the problem. Attacking the Cell Phones
A new mobile spyware program, which has already hit several cell phone users, enables hackers to have complete control of your phone without your knowledge. Cell phone threats, while rather recent to come on the scenes, are continuing to emerge at a concerning rate. Malware disguised as multimedia content and worms are being used to infect these devices. These pieces of malicious code cause the leakage of private information and in some cases extra service charges. With cell phones expected to top 3.5 billion by the end of 2008, the impact of a code pandemic would be huge. Cell phone giant Nokia acknowledges the possibility of the threat and says it intends to take all necessary steps to combat it. Fact: Phishing attacks have seen an 8% rise in the last quarter of 2007 and preliminary indications are that in the first half of 2008 also saw an increase of 11% Phishing attacks in the U.K. skyrocketed in the same period up some 200%. Fact: In December of 2007, financial institutions were the target of 92% of all phishing and online attacks. In addition, attacks against banking organizations soared 81% in the first quarter of 2008 Fact: Cyber criminals launched SQL injection attacks on thousands of web pages. Fact: Research conducted by the Swiss Institute of Technology, Google and IBM and found 600 million users had not updated their browsers. Failure to apply patches promptly or missing them entirely exposes the computer to data theft, hacking and other malicious activity. 81% of Firefox users were using the latest patches. 65% of Safari users were using the latest patches. 55% of Opera users were using the latest patches. 45% of Internet Explorer users were using the latest patches. .
The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of MobileIN.com.
|
.gif)