Cyber Crime
A recent report on Internet Security and cybercrime has shown that UK users are among the most targeted in the world, with both home users and businesses being attacked daily, and over half a billion personal records stolen in 2015.
The report highlights some shocking statistics that show just how big the cybercrime problem is.
It’s unsurprising that ransomware attacks were amongst the most popular, generating a massive income for the criminals. With an increase in attacks, the number of reported incidents dropped, with companies not wanting to lose public confidence as seen in the Talk Talk incident.
It’s a requirement for any breach of personal information to be reported back to the ICO and to the people whose data has been accessed.
Of the reported incidents, 36% come from the Health Service, but it’s estimated that 85% of private sector breaches went unreported.
If you handle personal data, either electronically or otherwise, then you are required to register with the ICO, it’s your responsibility to make sure your registration is kept up-to-date, and that you only record and process the data that’s required by your company.
Attacks on personal and business computers that were aimed at financial gain were the most prevalent during 2015, with attacks for personal information in second place.
The means to infect your computer became much more sophisticated, although there were a few old tricks brought back into use by the criminals, including the fake telephone support call and using office documents to spread macro worms.
[Microsoft Support Call Scam]
[2-Step Authentication Scam]
Also used widely in 2015 were 0-day exploits. A 0-day exploit is a vulnerability that is identified in some software, but has yet to be fixed by the software manufacturer, or identified by antivirus software. Typically a hacker who discovers a previously unknown vulnerability has about 7 days before system admins begin patching the vulnerability, though with home users and smaller companies, that could be up to 1 month or even longer.
In 2015, a new 0-day exploit was discovered every week, 19% of those were in Adobe Flash Player.
It’s not just the software you have installed either, in 2015, three quarters of websites surveyed in the report were susceptible to at least one vulnerability, meaning visiting a genuine website could lead to unknowingly downloading an infected file.
The increase in cyber attacks is not just aimed at big businesses, it’s across all sectors from home users and mobile phone users upwards.
In 2015 the number of cyber attacks against small businesses (1-250 employees) accounted for 43% of all spear-phishing attacks, and the number of attacks aimed at individual employees shot up 55% in 2015 based on the previous years stats.
This shows a more organised, targeted campaign by the criminals who know many small businesses don’t have in-house IT knowledge sufficient to deal with these kinds of attacks.
Home users were also big business, with criminals aware of the lack of protection of data saved on home NAS devices, and the slow install of security patches by home users.
The attacks don’t stop at desktop and laptop computers, with smartphones and other internet connected devices being targeted too. In six of the ten most recent flood attacks (DDoS attacks designed to put a server off-line) compromised home based internet devices (Internet Of Things, or IoT) such as fridges, TV’s and WiFi routers were largely used in the BotNets that carried out the attack.
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