Criminal activity still on increase
Patrick Evans, regional director at Symantec, says the tools that enable hackers to plant software on multiple computers are now available as a complete system, allowing people with limited skills to initiate attacks and control compromised computers.
The report says SA ranks 55th on the list of countries initiating attacks and 59th on the list of the number of infected computers. However, what's concerning is SA's 26th place on the list of locations for command and control servers – an infected computer used to co-ordinate attacks – especially considering our relatively low broadband penetration.
Evans comments that one mid-sized SA company's servers were compromised which almost pushed this country to the top of the charts for a short time.
What's also interesting is the potential for identity theft in virtual worlds rather than in the real world. Evans says writers of malicious software have also targeted online games such as Lineage and the phenomenally popular World of Warcraft. He says that over the past six months there have been a number of attacks aimed specifically at gathering account information for those games.
Finweek
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