Security threats are starting to merge

[Humpty]

The purveryors of malware are becoming increasingly well-organised and financed, according to vendor Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report.

 

In the past e-criminals made money from selling code, estiablishing botnets, or spamming, but gangs are now performing all three functions themselves to provide more co-ordianated attacks.

 

'We are starting to see blended threats much more,' said Ollie Whitehouse, researcher at Symantec. 'This is a stark contrast to how things were working a year ago. There is more financial backing to these criminals now: the organized crime aspect has definitely increased.'

 

Whitehouse says Symantec is spotting phishing and Trojan emails specifically designed to channel information back to specific web servers - a sign that threats are being co-ordinated.

 

Symantec recorded an average of 5,213 denial of service (DoS) attacks per day, down from 6,110 in the first half of the year. The US was the target of most DoS attacks, accounting for 52 per cent of the global total.

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