Increase Cyber crimes: Symantec reports

Bangalore, May 24 (UNI) While old threats persist, newer threats of Cyber Crimes are emerging and posing challenge to the digital economy, according to the findings of the Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR)-2006 released today.

Speaking to newsmen here after releasing the XI volume of the ISTR, Symantec India Managing Director Vishal Dhupur said the report covering the six-month period from July One-2006 to 31 December 2006 found that there was raise in Data theft, data leakage and targeted attacks for the financial gains.

Outlining the findings, Mr Dhupar said that Symantec detected a total of 166,248 unique phishing messages, an average of 904 per day, marking a 5 per cent increase over the first six months of 2006. He said that Syamtec throughout 2006 detected an average of 27 per cent fewer unique phishing messages on weekends than the average of 961 phishing messages on the weekdays. It was also observed that an increase in phishing activity during major holidays and other large events such as FIFA World Cup, were observed due to the fact that attackers may find it easier to craft theme specific social engineering attacks surrounding special events.

He said that for the first time Symantec identified the countries with the highest amount of malicious activity originating from their networks and United States had the highest proportion of overall malicious acts with 31 per cent, followed by China with 10 per cent and Germany (7 per cent).

He said that Symantec observed high levels of coordinated attacks combining spam, malicious code and online fraud. During second half of 2006 spam made up 59 per cent of all monitored e-mail traffic marking a steady increase over the first six months of 2006 with 30 per cent of the total spam related to the financial services industry resulting from an increase in 'pump-and dump' spam.

On Indian scenario, Mr Dhupar said that during six-month period Mumbai had the highest number of bot-infected computers accounting for 38 per cent followed by 25 per cent of all bot-infected computers in New Delhi and Bangalore ranked third with 15 per cent.

India was the 14th ranked country worldwide hosting Phishing web sites, he added.

Expressing concern over increase in number of cyber crimes in India, Mr Dhupar said that as broad band penetration increases the impact of threats also increases and the level of attacks were getting modular, sophisticated and for financial gain. Symantec had detected an average of 277 active bot-infected computers per day in India and it is not a welcome sign, he added.

UNI