2014-11-04 14:41 - Duncan Alfreds, Fin24
Cape Town - Cyber criminals are out on a buying spree for personal data as 2014 winds down into the shopping season.
According to a report from security company Trend Micro, the increase of web-connected populations is expected to go hand in hand with a rise in targeted attacks.
Research firm Gartner found that smartphone sales totalled 968 million units in 2013, representing growth of 42.3% over the previous year. This means that web-enabled smart mobiles accounted for 53.6% of all mobile phones sold.
"What we are seeing today is not a huge surprise but rather the velocity and brutal measures cyber criminals are using to steal information," said Gregory Anderson, South Africa country manager at Trend Micro.
The report, entitled Trend Micro Security Predictions for 2015 and Beyond: The Invisible Becomes Visible, says cyber criminals are changing their modus operandi from generic harvesting of data to specific, targeted attacks.
In 2014, large organisations were breached, including online e-commerce giant eBay, as well as retailer Target.
Specific victims
The eBay cross-site scripting attack is a cyber strategy where users are tricked into entering their details on a web page that looks almost identical to the target site.
In this way, hackers are able to mop up millions of passwords, e-mail addresses and user names that may be used to steal financial data.
After the Target attack, the retailer posted a message on its website to warn users about security.
"Be wary of call or e-mail scams that may appear to offer protection but are really trying to get personal information from you," the message reads in part.
Watch this video to see what you can do to prevent hacker attacks:
http://youtu.be/NJztqzr_Myg
In addition to targeted corporate attacks, cyber criminals have also targeted specific victims such as celebrities in the widely reported leaking of nude images.
Celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, have had images from their iCloud accounts leaked and Apple rejected accusations that its platform was flawed.
"E-mail addresses and passwords got harvested from a breach or leak on another website. They just happen to share the same credentials on iCloud, which lead to the compromise. This is the most plausible hypothesis," Guillaume Lovet, senior manager, FortiGuard Labs Threat Response Team at Fortinet told Fin24.
Vulnerable
According to Trend Micro, cyber criminal have identified that targeted attacks can result in a more lucrative windfall of personal data.
"Following the success of targeted attacks from Chinese and Russian cyber criminals, many hackers from other countries will regard cyber-attacks as a more practical method to grab a foothold in an organisation," said Anderson.
The company said that countries where a new generation of people are accessing the internet are particularly vulnerable to these targeted attacks.
"Trend Micro's threat defence experts predict hackers within countries such as Vietnam, UK, and India, will pursue the use of targeted attacks and we will see attacks against non-traditional countries like we've seen recently against Malaysia and Indonesia based organisations," said the company.
http://www.fin24.com/Tech/News/Cyber-criminals-shift-to-targeted-attacks-20141104
Cape Town - Cyber criminals are out on a buying spree for personal data as 2014 winds down into the shopping season.
According to a report from security company Trend Micro, the increase of web-connected populations is expected to go hand in hand with a rise in targeted attacks.
Research firm Gartner found that smartphone sales totalled 968 million units in 2013, representing growth of 42.3% over the previous year. This means that web-enabled smart mobiles accounted for 53.6% of all mobile phones sold.
"What we are seeing today is not a huge surprise but rather the velocity and brutal measures cyber criminals are using to steal information," said Gregory Anderson, South Africa country manager at Trend Micro.
The report, entitled Trend Micro Security Predictions for 2015 and Beyond: The Invisible Becomes Visible, says cyber criminals are changing their modus operandi from generic harvesting of data to specific, targeted attacks.
In 2014, large organisations were breached, including online e-commerce giant eBay, as well as retailer Target.
Specific victims
The eBay cross-site scripting attack is a cyber strategy where users are tricked into entering their details on a web page that looks almost identical to the target site.
In this way, hackers are able to mop up millions of passwords, e-mail addresses and user names that may be used to steal financial data.
After the Target attack, the retailer posted a message on its website to warn users about security.
"Be wary of call or e-mail scams that may appear to offer protection but are really trying to get personal information from you," the message reads in part.
Watch this video to see what you can do to prevent hacker attacks:
http://youtu.be/NJztqzr_Myg
In addition to targeted corporate attacks, cyber criminals have also targeted specific victims such as celebrities in the widely reported leaking of nude images.
Celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, have had images from their iCloud accounts leaked and Apple rejected accusations that its platform was flawed.
"E-mail addresses and passwords got harvested from a breach or leak on another website. They just happen to share the same credentials on iCloud, which lead to the compromise. This is the most plausible hypothesis," Guillaume Lovet, senior manager, FortiGuard Labs Threat Response Team at Fortinet told Fin24.
Vulnerable
According to Trend Micro, cyber criminal have identified that targeted attacks can result in a more lucrative windfall of personal data.
"Following the success of targeted attacks from Chinese and Russian cyber criminals, many hackers from other countries will regard cyber-attacks as a more practical method to grab a foothold in an organisation," said Anderson.
The company said that countries where a new generation of people are accessing the internet are particularly vulnerable to these targeted attacks.
"Trend Micro's threat defence experts predict hackers within countries such as Vietnam, UK, and India, will pursue the use of targeted attacks and we will see attacks against non-traditional countries like we've seen recently against Malaysia and Indonesia based organisations," said the company.
http://www.fin24.com/Tech/News/Cyber-criminals-shift-to-targeted-attacks-20141104
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