There’s an article up on Tech Web that indicates security threats were up by 50% in 2005. And that’s on top of the huge increases already reported in every previous year. Every month this year has topped last year’s numbers big time, and November was particularly strong. The disturbing thing about this trend is that it’s not fueled primarily by pranksters or idle hackers, but seems instead to be the new forum of choice for cybercrime.

Topping the list of threats is the general category of trojans, which outpaced worms and viruses by almost 2 to 1. This reflects a trend away from ordinarly malicious destruction in favor of code that takes control of user’s machines in order to steal Identity Theft information, which can be sold at huge profits on the black market. As I’ve reported here in the past, this is one of the hottest growth areas of criminal law, allowing criminal organizations to fund targeted, profitable schemes that don’t involve the risks of guns or getaway cars.

With all the incoming data supporting these findings, it’s not surprising that in my practice I get more than 3 times the number of calls regarding Identity Theft than any other type of crime. Maybe it’s because I’m two blocks down the street from Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington, but from where I sit, this is going to be the hot growth area for many businesses, not just mine. For example, read Microsoft’s press release announcing their Phishing Filter and SmartScreen Technology, and their new anti-cybercrime partners here.

RP

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 8:17 pm and is filed under News, Cybercrime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.