02 January 2008

2007 'saw high-tech crime become firmly entrenched'

Cyber criminals are becoming increasingly advanced and 2007 was the year that hi-tech crime became firmly established and entrenched, an expert has said.

According to Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at security solutions provider Secure Computing, "the bad guys are becoming more sophisticated and that means it is becoming more difficult to stay safe", the BBC reports.

He added that he sees no end to the rise in online crime until "we effectively reduce the value of personal information to the point where for the hackers it is useless".

Joe Telafici, vice president of operations for McAfee's Avert Labs, went on to say that the majority of attacks perpetrated are now done for money.

The last year saw the effective extinction of young hackers who wrote malicious programmes and viruses for fun, he stated.

While some of the attacks, such as phishing runs, were obviously concerned with stealing money from internet users' credit cards or bank accounts, others that looked more innocuous were also done with cash in mind, according to Mr Telafici.

For example, Trojans placed in banner advertisements that attempt to hijack a home PC were designed to get hold of information that can be rented out for a fee to spammers and other internet criminals.

Recently, search engine provider Google was affected by a web hijacking campaign in which malicious websites used by hijackers would come up in search results when users looked up seemingly innocuous terms such as "charity".

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