Antivirus firm McAfee has released the results of its study into “virtual criminology”, identifying changing patterns of IT crime and weaknesses that criminal gangs can exploit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
McAfee security specialist Lee Fisher, author of the report, said the biggest risk for companies is their own apathy. “Firms believe (wrongly) that viruses and code are a benign risk, that because they have a firewall they are protected,” he said, adding that “about 70 percent” of internet threats are driven by profit, not a desire for notoriety.<\/p>\n
Fisher said that firms face a number of separate dangers. “The fast-spreading viruses make all the headlines, but they are not the biggest threats.” The biggest dangers include key-logging tools and bot network tools that could be used for distributed denial-of-service attacks.<\/p>\n
To help firms protect themselves against these risks, in March McAfee will start updating its virus alerts and tools on a daily basis. Fisher said that this requirement was unimaginable five years ago, but the firm is now seeing about 50 new threats or viruses each day.<\/p>\n
McAfee’s report emphasises that the internet is global, fast and virtual, adding, “In the wrong hands, this adds up to the potential to make vast sums of money illegally.”<\/p>\n
Fisher said McAfee worked with enforcement experts and academics for seven months to draw up what he described as “the first in-depth picture of (the) new invisible threats we face”.<\/p>\n
Online crimes include hacking, and less obvious threats such as the use of zombies and bot-networks to host malicious code or illegal material. McAfee said that the perpetrators of online crime had matured from being “geeks in bedrooms” to organised criminal gangs.<\/p>\n
Two years ago the company’s researchers saw about 300 potentially malicious attacks a month, now that figure has grown to 1,500.<\/p>\n
McAfee noted that many traditionally physical crimes, such as extortion and money-laundering, are now carried out online, and the scale of the problem is “massive”.<\/p>\n
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