Cyber attacks to increase in lead up to 2010
The dedicated Symantec division at Workgroup has announced that South Africans should protect themselves against the plethora of Internet attacks likely to hit around the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament.
Mainly focussed on monetary gain, FIFA-related spam is set to grow in the run-up to the event, says Justice Mcebi, product manager: Symantec at Workgroup who adds that, according to Symantec’s monthly spam reports, around 10 percent of all spam in 2008 was fraud-related, such as those advertising fake tickets.
“During the previous FIFA World Cup, related phishing attacks jumped by 40 percent,” he says. As many as 4 615 phishing hosts per month were discovered in 2008, which was a rise of 66 percent over the previous year.
Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Reports have shown the countries introducing pervasive broadband services experience an immediate increase in threats, as cybercriminals take advantage of breaches and vulnerabilities arising from inadequate security.
“This has been identified in countries such as Brazil, Turkey and Poland and South Africa is likely to follow this trend once the new undersea cables have been successfully installed.” Mcebi says that three basic types of information attributes need to be protected around global events: availability, integrity and confidentiality.
The availability of information, he says, could be compromised through denial-of-service attacks where users are prevented from accessing legitimate Web sites.
These types of attacks are very common around large-scale sporting events, resulting in lost orders for business offering goods and services online. These will probably be focussed on, but not limited to, FIFA and World cup-related Web sites and organisations.
Just another marketing scheme like the Y2K compliant thing in 1999/2000. They just want us to by their software.
[...] Originally posted here: Cyber attacks to increase in lead up to 2010 [...]
Of course companies are trying to punt their solutions but to think cybercrime isn’t a definite threat facing business today is very naive. Consider the damage done by Confickr.C and the damage promised by follow up Confickr versions – that alone should compel businesses to protect themselves.
confickr didn’t cause any damage. the costs related to it were expended in an attempt to clean it off systems. it’s like self-inflicted “damage” (in the way of wasted manhours “fixing” things).
this is actually a great reference article. i’m currently doing research into the potential vulnerabilities being thrusted online by new populations getting broadband access. the trend, which this article supports, is that newer populations (sometimes countries) getting broadband Internet access are increasingly vulnerable (likely due to using pirated software without patching capabilities – eg micro$oft) to cybercrime exploitation (eg botnets, etc.).