30 December 2008

2009: The Year of the Intelligent Cyber Criminal

It may be the festive season, filled with kindness and good will - but the closing days of 2008 are also a time to reflect over the year past, its trends and the risks that come from the not-so kind and less good willed. While we bigmouths don't want to put a damper on the festivities, it's important to be aware of 2008's alter ego as 'the year of the intelligent cyber criminal'.

Every day, many internet users find their inboxes besieged with spam e-mails. Most of them are obviously junk. Won a million in the Swedish lottery? Ever heard of it? We're not really stupid enough to fall for that one, are we?

This candid, cyber-savvy arrogance has created a new arena for the professional cyber criminal - someone continually looking for new, smarter ways to penetrate your computer. One of the most well-known of these techniques is the 'Scareware Scam'.

According to digital security company Finjan, up to five million people have fallen victim to scareware scams. Sneaky criminal companies operate the scam by advertising so-called 'free virus checks' on popular websites. The unsuspecting user downloads the software which tells them that their computer is infected with spyware, viruses or pornography.

However, these results are false - but as many as five million people have purchased the 'remedy software' needed to fix the supposed problem.

Such cyber scams have made the headlines thanks to an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission. Focussing its enquiries on two major companies, the FTC has begun a crackdown on scareware scams. Between them, the two companies have made millions with genuine-sounding security products such as WinFixer, DriveCleaner and XP Antivirus. Until now, these companies have avoided courtroom proceedings..

Of course, in the cat and mouse game that is cyber-regulation, the good guys get their day too. Sadly though, it really wasn't much longer. For a brief period in November spam levels fell to 64.1 billion messages per day, before rising back up to record numbers close to 100 billion.

The prediction for 2009 is gloomy. Finjan believes that the IT job-layoffs - results of the economic crisis - could lead to a dramatic increase in digital crime. With thousands of unemployed programmers in need of an income, Finjan believes many will use their expertise to earn money through online crime tactics.

The main concern is not the number of potential hackers entering the playing field, but that we are all getting so tech-savvy and spam-shrewd that it will take even more cunning and manipulative tricks to really work on us. With the possibility of thousands of intelligent IT professionals entering the digital crime scene, scams are going to get more and more elaborate and we might once again be as spam- gullible as we were when spam e-mails first hit the scene.

Happy holidays - be vigilant!

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