Fortunately and unfortunately all software and networking hardware vendors and manufacturers has been equally hit by the various flavors by the various flavors of adware, spyware, rootkits, worms, viruses and Trojan horses. Any operating system running on 95 % to 98% percent of the desktops, and more servers will be hit most by the numbers, thus, generating more publicity.
But Slammer was only the beginning. Several others less successful but equally annoying worms also made their debuts during the first quarter. Deloder and a new version of Lovgate both hit the Web in March, as did Code Red.F. In addition to generating a tremendous amount of network traffic as they propagate and slowing down the entire internet traffic, both Deloder and Code Red.F install back doors on infected machines, leaving machines vulnerable to future manipulation by attackers.
Suddenly, it has become the full time job of someone to monitor systems security and install patches. In most cases, it is important to ensure that the patch being applied do not affect the other business and proprietary software that you may have in the production
"The large increase in mass-mailing, very highly persistent worms and security events indicates that this year will be challenging for security officers and administrators around the world”. These levels are consistent with Global forecasts that show a steady amount of malicious activity on the Internet throughout 2003," said Chris Rouland, director of ISS' X-Force security research team. "Hackers", criminals and hacktivists continue to disrupt services, commit online theft, and cause outages across the Internet by exploiting unprotected computers, especially by focusing their activities on critical and widely-deployed systems and infrastructure."
ISS (Internet Security Systems Inc. ) compiles its quarterly statistics, known as the Internet Risk Impact Summary Report, by culling data from more than 400 intrusion detection sensors installed at customer sites.
Frauds and Scams
Cyber-attacks also have been complicated with the Frauds and Scams emanating especially from the third world countries like Nigeria. Most of the government establishments in the United States informs and update business owners of well known scams and frauds and for whatever reason; Nigeria (now, they come from - and are all over the world) seems to appear on the records and at the heart of some of the biggest money scams in the last ten to fifteen years.
Certain personal and private information can be hidden from the hackers; we need to implement the technologies that allow us to control a certain level of access to our personal information and one of ways of doing that is by disabling cookies, though are they nice to have for your shopping cart etc. However, on the other hand there is really no way of easily controlling many of the unwanted emails that we receive daily that may carry worms and Trojan horses that actually "climb" over firewalls. I have personally received all of the flavors and many of the popular "419 Scam" emails from Nigeria, known popularly as "the Nigerian Princes Letters". "419" is the decree that outlaws such in Nigeria. Another popular term for it in Nigeria is "OBT" (Obtaining By Trick).
The letters and emails most of the time appear obviously as scams or not from a legitimate business. To view some such letters click here to read more, the comments that come in suggest that this scam hurt the reputation of legitimate African businessmen among people who have no other knowledge of, e.g., West African society. As if business was not tough enough. The relatively few scam artists cast a shadow of suspicion over many business dealings. Africa is a country rich in resources with a tremendous history and is quite attractive to many aggressive "business magnets".
Many of the scams play on the victims' greed, but many play on victim's financial neediness, altruism or religious feelings. The specifically business-related scams entice small to mid-sized business people or faith-based organizations to pay advance fees to bid on non-existent contracts, or to give money to pay fees associated with moving money to their bank account. The religious scams, sprinkled with a lot of references to God and church work, prey especially on faith-based organizations.
There are many concerned individuals and organizations from the many different parts of the world that have published articles and also shown great concern in many different ways as one of the seasoned, Canadian and world-class veteran Dr. Joel A. Freeman stated: "Perhaps (let us hope) a future Nigeria, tranquil and prosperous, will see fewer of these frustrated novelists-in-crime -- their literary talents will have found other legitimate avenues by which to profit. The 419 scams are truly sad, because there are so many wonderful people in Africa. Many people truly love Africa and love Africans.
Nothing about this issue is taken as a criticism of any nation or people, nor do we suggest that there are no scam artists in other countries”. You can find more about him and read his writings at http://www.freemaninstitute.com/JAFbio.htm
On the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) report released in April 2003, (“IFCC is a program of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, and its mission is "to address fraud committed over the Internet”) statistics, about 75,063 complaints were filed in 2002 and the "total dollar loss from all referred cases of fraud was $54 million, up from $17 million in 2001, with a median dollar loss of $299 per complaint."
I will appreciate emails or stories that people can send me about their experiences or concerns with the Cyber-attacks, Electronic Fraud and Nigerian scams. You can forward them to me at the e-mail address below.
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