Home users more prone to cyber attack: Study

New Delhi, Oct 8: Home users are being increasingly targeted by cyber attackers as they are less likely to have established security measures in place and are prone to attacks for theft, fraud and other motivated crimes, a latest internet security threat report released by Symantec said here.

The report notes that home users constitutes the most targeted sector by attackers, accounting for 86 per cent, followed by financial services business.

According to the report, vulnerabilities affecting web applications, including web brousers, e-mail clients and other desktop applications, accounted for 69 per cent in the first half of 2006.

Attackers are now using a variety of techniques to escape detection and prolong their presence on systems in order to gain more time to steal information, hijack the computer for marketing purpose, provide remote access or otherwise compromise confidential information for profit, it added.

''Attackers see end-users as the weakest link in the security chain and are cosntantly targetting them in an effort to make illegitimate gains,'' Symantec India Managing Director Vishal Dhupar said.

Given the effect this has on company's large and growing customer base, Symantec, an internet security solution developer, introduced new metrics to further understand how to better protect customers against these security concerns in years to come, he added.

During the first half of 2006, Symantec observed an average of 6,110 denial of service (DoS) attacks per day. The US was the location of the most DoS targets, accounting for 54 per cent of the worldwide total, and the internet service provider (ISP) sector was the second most vulnerable target for DoS attacks.

The US also had the highest percentage of bot-command-and-control servers with 42 per cent of the total, and China had the highest number of bot-infected computers with 20 per cent of computers in use across the world.

UNI