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Home | News | E-commerce in the firing line
E-commerce in the firing line
Friday, 8 October 2004E-commerce is the "single most targeted industry" according to the latest report from security software provider Symantec.
The bi-annual report found that hackers now seem to be motivated more by financial gain than notoriety and are increasingly focusing on key-logging and phishing scams.
It revealed that 16 per cent of all attacks registered in the first six months of this year were on e-commerce, an increase of 400 per cent since the last report.
"Companies using e-commerce also retain a lot of data about customers, account numbers and personal information and a lot of smaller business conducting transactions online don't put the money into security, so they become easy targets," managing director John Donovan told ZDNet.
More worryingly, Symantec found that the time taken for a hacker to identify a vulnerability and release a code to exploit it has been cut to an average of 5.8 days, compared to around 120 days in 2001.
Mr Donovan predicted that phishing and spam would increase again by the next report, as would spyware and viruses targeting portable and Bluetooth devices.
The bi-annual report found that hackers now seem to be motivated more by financial gain than notoriety and are increasingly focusing on key-logging and phishing scams.
It revealed that 16 per cent of all attacks registered in the first six months of this year were on e-commerce, an increase of 400 per cent since the last report.
"Companies using e-commerce also retain a lot of data about customers, account numbers and personal information and a lot of smaller business conducting transactions online don't put the money into security, so they become easy targets," managing director John Donovan told ZDNet.
More worryingly, Symantec found that the time taken for a hacker to identify a vulnerability and release a code to exploit it has been cut to an average of 5.8 days, compared to around 120 days in 2001.
Mr Donovan predicted that phishing and spam would increase again by the next report, as would spyware and viruses targeting portable and Bluetooth devices.