Hacking on the increase

Hacking is on the increase, IBM says

There were 237 million hacking attacks from January to June this year, a 50 per cent increase over the previous half year, research shows.

IBM's Global Business Security Index shows one in 52 emails contained a malicious security threat in December 2004,a figure that increased to one in 28 by June this year.

There was however a fall in the ratio between spam and legitimate email from 83 per cent in January to 67 per cent in June, but virus carrying emails increased by 50 per cent.

The IBM report also records a 10-fold increase in what it calls ‘spear-phishing’, the deliberate targeting of individuals or organisations in an attempt to trick them into giving away sensitive information.

Other findings in the Global Business Security Index include:

• Who gets attacked most:  governments are the most targeted with more than 54 million attacks, manufacturing ranked second with almost 36 million attacks recorded and financial services was third with a little over 34 million
• Origin of attacks:  Over the past six months, the United States was the source of the most attacks with 12 million, followed by New Zealand with 1.2 million, and China with approximately one million; Ireland was last with more than 30,000 attacks
• When will they attack: Increased critical security events are seen on Fridays and Sundays
• Look out for snoopers: Reconnaissance attacks - probes to discover what devices, software, or vulnerabilities may exist - totalled more than 108 million, followed by service attacks of more than 61 million, web attacks with 29 million, denial of service attacks with 26 million; security administration was last with more than 230,000 attacks