MUMBAI/BANGLORE, INDIA: The US-based retailer and owner of TJ Maxx stores TJX saw nearly 40 million customer records being hacked into, and by the time the company came to know of this, most of the details were already up on sale on a few e-commerce websites.
TJX is not alone. In early 2003, a Russian-hackers' extortion network shut down Grafix Softech which hosted 120 gambling sites around the world, by planting botnets in its systems.
Multibet.com in Australia received similar digital threats just two years ago. When its CEO refused, the company was attacked four times and his business was interrupted for 20 days until he wired the protection money to a Latvian bank account. Another band of new age hackers demanded $40,000 from BetCris, another gambling portal in 2003.
"The cyber crime industry is the new-age mafia, it is even bigger than the illegal drug industry" says David Spenhoff, vice-president at anti-virus maker Trend Micro. What used to be attempts to earn five minutes of fame in the cyber world has undergone tremendous transformation. Over the past two to three years, the attack pattern has changed completely.
Earlier, an attacker used to be a prying programmer who wanted to make a name for himself in the cyber world. Today, hackers like Gary McKinnon are passé. Mckinnon allegedly is the perpetrator of what's considered the biggest hack in the history of computer science, into a military system. In 2001 and 2002, he made a mockery of the information security of NASA and Pentagon for pride and glory.
Today's attackers on the other hand have no axe to grind nor do they seek glory among their peers, for them it is all about money. "Attacks these days are mainly for financial gains, things like stock manipulation. It is rare to have threats for political reasons," says Anil Chakravarthy, head, R&D, Symantec. Interestingly, most threats and virus attacks in present times are blended to your normally-accessed programs. "We are seeing a lot of blended threats which are most dangerous. There are several threads of connections that hackers go through.
This type of threats are increasing," he adds.
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Last update : 05-07-2007 08:32
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