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According to data from McAfee Avert Labs, the monitoring and research arm of security vendor McAfee Inc., malware attacks are growing at astronomical rates and it's happening for one simple reason: the malware writers are making money. Data from McAfee indicates 245 per cent growth in the number of malware being developed from 2006 to 2007, with a further 300 per cent growth projected from 2007 to 2008. And year to date, McAfee said the amount of malware generated has already surpassed 2006 and 2007 combined. Recently, RSA FraudAction Research Lab discovered login information for 300,000 online bank accounts and 250,000 credit and debit card accounts that have been gathered by a cybercrime gang over the past three years using the Sinowal Trojan. The Trojan is programmed to execute when the victim visits a particular banking or financial Web site; it is triggered by more than 2,700 specific URLs. The malware then inserts additional fields into the victim's browser prompting the victim to type in information such as PIN and Social Security number, which the website itself does not request. The threat to your online safety is real. More than 2 million legitimate Internet websites have been breached last year. These websites try to compromise your browser and steal sensitive information that you view and submit through the browser. Hundreds of new legitimate websites are being compromised every day. New vulnerabilities in your browser, operating system, and software you run are being discovered every day and are used by these websites to achieve unauthorized access to information inside your browser. Criminals are becoming smarter and more dangerous. |