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Technology Nov 2007 Cyberthreats escalate Scams and spam on rise |
An
electronic crime wave has forced New Zealand Police to add new tools to
their artillery to clean up what Police Commissioner Howard Broad
describes as "cyberspace wild west".
Symantec found 95 percent of such attacks were on home users and that phishing attacks had increased 54 percent in the first half of 2007, when the company blocked more than 2.3 billion such messages, up 54 percent. A multi-billion economy is being fuelled through these attacks in conjunction with stolen credit cards sold on the Internet for a couple of dollars each.
Security company Sophos said web attacks had become widespread with an average of 30,000 newly-infected pages a day by June, a huge increase from 5000 pages earlier in the year. It claimed about 80 percent of all web-based malware was now hosted on legitimate, innocent, but compromised, sites.
Geoff
Cossey from Chillisoft says it pays to remain cynical and suspicious on
the Internet and even be cautious about communications with friends.
Many people actually invite malware onto their machines when they click
on interesting links or access e-cards that appear to be from trusted
friends but end up infecting their machines.
Meanwhile worldwide spam levels continued to edge up, comprising around
70 percent of total email messaging by September. Spam
- unwanted, unsolicited electronic junkmail - was tailing off but
escalated again from mid-year. Auckland anti-spam company SMX, said by
August the
number of spam messages hitting New Zealand email systems
was 100 percent up on the May numbers and 50 percent up on the previous
record set in January 2006.
The Act
aimed to prevent New Zealand becoming a haven for spammers and gave
legal ground for the Department of Internal Affairs to cooperate with
global agencies. |
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