Cyber Criminals Cooperate to Swipe Data

March 21, 2007: Symantec has released the findings of its latest internet security threat report, showing that cyber criminals are continuing to refine attacks aimed at data theft, data leakage and the creation of targeted, malicious code to harvest personal information.

Perhaps more worrying, cyber criminals are also increasingly working cooperatively. Key findings in the report show that there was more than 6 million distinct bot-infected computers worldwide during the second half of 2006, a 29 percent increase, while the number of command-and-control servers used to relay commands to these bots decreased by 25 percent. Symantec says this indicates that bot network owners are consolidating their networks and increasing the size of their existing networks.

Next to increasing coordination of botnets, Trojans are also high on the threat list making up 45 percent of the top 50 code samples, a 23 percent increase over the first six months of 2006.

12 zero-day vulnerabilities surfaced during the second half of 2006, and on a non-software level the theft or loss of a computer or data storage medium made up 54 percent of all identity theft-related data breaches.

Symantec also identified the United States as having the highest proportion of overall malicious activity, with 31 percent, followed by China with 10 percent and Germany with 7 percent.

"As cyber criminals become increasingly malicious, they continue to evolve their attack methods to become more complex and sophisticated in order to prevent detection," said Arthur Wong, senior vice president, Symantec Security Response and Managed Services. "End users, whether consumers or enterprises, need to ensure proper security measures to prevent an attacker from gaining access to their confidential information, causing financial loss, harming valuable customers, or damaging their own reputation."

The report covers the six-month period from July 1, 2006, through December 31, 2006 and is based on a broad set of indicators including data collected from more than 40,000 sensors deployed in more than 180 countries.

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