Virus writers follow the money
More than half of recent major Internet threats tried to harvest personal information, a sign that financial gain is behind the attacks, according to a Symantec study.
Identity theft features were found in 54 percent of the top 50 malicious codes detected between July and December last year, the security company said in a report released on Monday. That marks an increase on the 36 percent found during the same period in 2003.
“This represents a clear trend that attackers have gone from seeking fame to seeking fortune,” said Oliver Friedrichs, a senior manager with Symantec Security Response.
Computers are increasingly coming under attack from Trojan horses, worms and viruses that attempt to glean users’ cached log-on data and passwords to financial information. This trend is not likely to slow down soon, Friedrichs noted.