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Botnets and organises cybercrime is getting more prevalent, it seems it’s increasing exponentially despire crackdowns by the US governments and other organisations.
The criminals are getting more advanced, phishing scams are getting more realistic, technically trojans are getting more effective and the groups are getting really organised.
Cybercrooks are organizing better and moving to more sophisticated tactics to get their hands on confidential data and turn PCs of unwitting users into bots, representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations said in separate presentations here at the Computer Security Institute’s NetSec event this week.
Law enforcement has had increased successes in catching, prosecuting and convicting phishers and bot herders over the past couple of years. However, catching the bad guys is getting tougher as the criminals become more professional, the representatives said.
The success rate has increased, but the incident rate has increased even higher.
Cybercriminals are often after data they can turn into cash, such as credit card numbers or even trade secrets. “If you have a smaller botnet and you combine that with targeted, really sophisticated social engineering tactics, you’re going to be potentially a lot more successful,” Whitmore said.
The military has seen a rise in such attacks over the last couple of years, Whitmore said. The attackers know what organizations work together, which generals would be involved and what issues they would talk about, she said. It’s “incredibly disturbing, because those are the kinds of things that should be kept somewhat secret,” she said.
The money is in attacking the consumers now, it might be for your credit card details or just your bandwidth to launch DDoS attacks as a way of extorting money from companies.
Either way it seems the paradigm has truly shifted, and attacking corporates is not the way to get the big money.
Source: CNET