Hackers are at it Again

Are we able to stop hackers? The answer seems too obvious, NO! This last week a on Ocober 3 agroup of hackers calling themselves GhostShell claim to have stolen thousands of personal records by breaching servers of more than 50 universities around the world, including the top universities for higher learning here in the United States according to a report in Cnet. The group claims to have leaked about 120,000 records but they have more in their servers. In addition, the group says they have more projects in the works. What is worse this past August the same group released a vast quantity of data from banks, governments, consulting firms and many more.

How scary is hacking? Well after some searching I found some statics in a website called StopTheHacker that it would give anyone some pause and make them realize how serious is this problem.

• Play Station Network – Computers are not the only hacked, in 2007 the Sony Playstation Network had to shut down due to an “external intrusion” which compromised around 77 million accounts
• Intellectual Property – In 2008 alone around $1 Trillion dollars’ worth of intellectual properties were stolen.
• Password - it takes 10 minutes to hack a password that is 6 character longs, add two extra letters and it takes three years
• Victims – 73% of American have fallen victim to some type of cybercrime
• Time is not on your side – there is 156 days between the time a computer resources is compromised and the time the compromised is detected
• Business is Booming – StopTheHacker conducted a survey where 90% of the business that responded suffered some sort of hack and 77% of those felt they were successfully attacked
• Zombies – In 2009 a security firm Finjan discover a bot net run by a Ukrainian gang that consisted over 1.9 million zombie computers. Who much did the thieves make? Close to $190,000 per day
• Infected Sites – Currently there are over 30, 000 sites that are considered infected
• Vulnerable Sites – In 2010 the average website was found over 230 serious vulnerabilities
• Identity Theft – 27 million Americans have fallen victims, 9 million last year alone

So how all of this started? First of hacking was not all about stealing and malicious attacks. Hacking started for fun by two brothers from Lahore Pakistan in September 1986 to show the vulnerabilities in PC’s running DOS, demonstrating that they were not as secure as IBM and Microsoft lead to believe. Fast forward 25 years where 99 percent of malware comes from criminal gangs (Honan, 2011).

This blog is meant scare anyone, this blog is meant raise awareness as we celebrate security awareness during the month of October.

The FBI Scam & Safety article has some very easy but yet effective tip to keep your PC safe:

• Keep your firewall turned on
• Install or update your Antivirus software
• Install or Update Your Antispyware Technology
• Be careful what you download
• Turn off Your Computer

Just remember security is just like mother’s day, it does not happen just once a year, security awareness has to be 24/7.

References

Ten Scariest Hacking Statistics. (2012, Arpril 12). Retrieved October 7, 2012, from StopTheHacker

Honan , M. (2011, Augsut 13). Why hackers write computer viruses . Retrieved October 7, 2012, from MSNBC

How to Protect Your Computer. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2012, from FBI

Musil, S. (2012, October 3). Hackers post data from dozens of breached college servers. Retrieved October 7, 2012, from Cnet