Threat to personal info on rise

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: There has been an increase in the number of security attacks designed to steal personal information or trick people into providing it through social engineering, according to the Security Intelligence report released by Microsoft Corp.

A comprehensive analysis of the threat landscape shows that attackers are increasingly targeting personal information to make a profit and are threatening to impact people's privacy.

The report found that during the first half of 2007, 31.6 million phishing scams were detected, an increase of more than 150 per cent over the previous six months. The study also shows a 500 per cent increase in trojan downloaders and droppers, malicious code used to install files such as trojans, password stealers, keyboard loggers and other malware on users' systems.

Two notable families of trojans detected and removed by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool are specifically targeted at stealing data and banking information.

"As the security of the operating system improves, we are seeing cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, diverse and targeted in their methods of stealing personal information," said Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development for the Windows Core Operating System Division at Microsoft. "Personal information is the currency of crime, and malicious attackers are targeting it to make their cyberattacks and other scams more authentic, credible and successful, and to make a profit."

Microsoft also released findings from a recent survey of more than 3,600 security, privacy and marketing executives across a variety of industries in the US, the UK and Germany, including financial services, healthcare, technology and government.

Conducted by the Ponemon Institute LLC, the study found that as security threats increasingly target personal information, more collaboration among security and privacy officers is critical to avoid costly compromises or breaches of personal information.

The study for the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Group, titled "Microsoft Study on Data Protection and Role Collaboration Within Organizations", found that organisations with poor collaboration were more than twice as likely as organisations with good collaboration to have suffered a data breach in the past two years.

Microsoft's Security Intelligence Report provides customers and partners with a comprehensive understanding of the types of threats Microsoft customers face today so they can take appropriate action to help ensure they are better protected both now and in the future.

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