Internet Security is Compromised Because of Money
Posted on November 29th, 2008
Earning fast cash on the Internet continues to be the primary driver for the spread of malicious viruses and Trojans and will be the trend in the latter years; this is what a Symantec executive said.
Effendy Ibrahim, Symantec Consumer Business Lead for Asia South Region has said, “the creation of spyware and viruses is growing fast into something more malicious and financially driven.â€
The truth is, virus makers are more ingenious now and are not just attacking operating system vulnerabilities but the web browser vulnerabilities and multimedia attacks as well, particularly those that use click-over videos that actually download viruses onto unprotected computers.
According to Ibrahim, malware software developers are manipulating Internet user behavior by targeting specific Internet activities. Some of these is Photo and video sharing as well as news story sharing.
Browser-based video streaming and photo sharing allowed malware makers to use these as jump points to spread their attacks. However, the said attacks are more targeted nowadays. Instead of taking down the whole websites, some Trojans capture user accounts, especially credit card numbers that the malware can use for their won purposes.
More than 10,000 websites are being comprised everyday and several of these users of the infected sites do not know that they are downloading malicious applications.
“Identity theft is very common, that is why the malware makers are doing targeted attacks and doing it stealthily. People needs to be more careful when using their personal computers now and they must use the appropriate kind of security applications,†Ibrahim said.
Recently, Symantec released its Norton 2009 antispyware and antivirus software series in the Philippines.
The company has made new software less intrusive to its users. One of its features is that the applications would run on the background without having to interrupt the user. Additionally, Norton 2009 has automated updates to ensure that the user is protected from the very latest security issues.
