Online Risks Increase

According to new data from security firm Symantec, online criminals are increasingly turning to Web applications–rather than e-mail–and are motivated more by money than by bragging rights. In the early days of the Internet, many hackers engaged in such activities purely for the challenge or for the notoriety of successfully bypassing security measures. Today’s hackers, according to Symantec, are after credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and other information they can use to steal money from victims. Targeted attacks–as compared to viruses and other randomly circulated malicious code–are increasingly directed at financial institutions, jumping from just 4 percent in the last six months of 2005 to 14 percent in the first six months of 2006.

The result is a potential loss of confidence in online commerce and banking. Hackers are also spending more efforts targeting Web applications, given the growing numbers of vulnerabilities discovered in browsers, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Apple’s Safari.

Wall Street Journal, 25 September 2006 (sub. req’d)