Beware of security breach over Instant messenger!

BANGALORE: Security threats over instant messenger is a new trend that is likely to spread over the Internet, warns the latest Symantec Internet security threat report.





Elaborating on the findings of a survey, Vishal Dhupar, MD, Symantec India said that attackers were planning attacks not just to show off their hacking prowess but for profit.





"Malicious code attacks that could reveal confidential data increased from 74 percent to 80 percent in the period from July-December 2005," he said.





The survey reports an increase in modular malicious code, which initially has limited functionality but is designed to update itself with new and more damaging capabilities.





"These threats expose data that can be used in identity theft, credit card fraud and other cybercrimes," said Dhupar.





The incidence of BOTS or programs that provide attackers with unauthorized control of a computer is leading to an increase in cybercrimes. While the number of BOT -affected computers has reduced by 11% (from 10,347 affected systems to 9163 per day), Dhupar said that attackers, who try to unleash denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, prefer BOT networks.





The countries that bore the brunt of such attacks included US, UK, France and China. "The BOT attacks are high in these countries since the PC penetration and broadband usage is quite high," he said.





Prime targets for such attacks were financial services, education, small businesses and government.





Attacks directed at web applications increased 15 percent from last year. Phishing threats and Spam attacks also saw an increase. Around 11,000 worm and virus variants of the Win32 virus, which included the Kamasutra worm were reported from July to December 2005.





On the rise in spamming, Dhupar said that the expanding bandwidth availability in developed countries is causing an increase in spam attacks.