NIGERIA is now ranked 70 in the world for malicious attacks and cybercrime according to Symantec’s latest internet security threat report (volume XV) highlighted from January 1, 2009 to Dececember 31, 2009.
Mr. Gordon Love, Regional Director for Africa at Symantec said attacks have evolved from simple scams to highly sophisticated espionage campaigns targeting some of the world’s largest corporations and government entities.
The scale of these attacks and the fact that they originate from across the world, made it a truly international problem requiring the cooperation of both the private sector and world governments.
He said Nigeria ranked number 43 in EMEA (Europe and Middle East Africa) and 70 in the world in 2009 for malicious activity. In comparison to the previous year, South Africa climbed seven places from 50 to 43 globally.
Also, given the potential for monetary gain from compromised corporate intellectual property (IP), cyber criminals have turned their attention towards enterprises.
The report found that attackers are leveraging the abundance of personal information openly available on social networking sites to synthesise socially engineered attacks on key individuals within targeted companies.
The report shows that software has lowered the bar to entry for new cyber criminals, making it easy for unskilled attackers to compromise computers and steal information, and with kits like Zeus, attackers created literally millions of new malicious code variants in an effort to evade detection by security software.
It also revealed that present day attackers leverage social networking techniques to lure unsuspecting users to malicious websites.
These websites then attack the victim’s Web browser and vulnerable plug-ins normally used to view video or document files.
In particular, 2009 saw dramatic growth in the number of Web-based attacks targeted at PDF viewers; and accounted for 49 percent of observed Web-based attacks. This is a sizeable increase from the 11 percent reported in 2008.
The report saw firm signs that malicious activity is now taking root in countries with an emerging broadband infrastructure, such as South Africa , Brazil, India , Poland, Vietnam and Russia .
In 2009, these countries moved up the rankings as a source and target of malicious activity by cyber criminals and sixty percent of all data breaches that exposed identities were the result of hacking.
The Internet Security Threat Report is derived from data collected by tens of millions of Internet sensors, first-hand research, and active monitoring of hacker communications, and it provides a global view of the state of Internet Security.
The study period for the Internet Security Threat Report XV covers January 2009 to December 2009.
By IKECHUKWU OSODO
Nigeria Bureau
