Cyber crime tool kits go on sale

Cyber crime tool kits go on sale
The following is an amaziing news item about how cyber crime is becoming a big business--well didnt we know about it already--no we are not talking about how widespread cyber crime and how much money these criminals make but this one is shockingly different. There is in fact even no crime in what these guys are doing. You cant have any such charge stick. The news item in BBC says there is a big market developing in cyber crime kits which is being sold to even people who are hardly techno savvy but are crime hungry!

The news goes as follows......
Malicious hackers are producing easy to use tools that automate attacks to cash in on a boom in hi-tech crime.
On sale, say security experts, are everything from individual viruses to comprehensive kits that let budding cyber thieves craft their own attacks.
The top hacking tools are being offered for prices ranging up to £500.
Some of the most expensive tools are sold with 12 months of technical support that ensures they stay armed with the latest vulnerabilities. more

more on internet crimes

We all know about spam - we all get inboxes full of it! Unsolicited junk e-mail is still on the increase.
Over the last three years we have seen the amount of spam flying around the 'net grow at phenomenal rate.
9% of all emails were identified as spam in 2002. A year later that had risen to 40%. And last year, a mailbox-busting 73% of all e-mail was spam - that is 9.2 billion junk messages! (from BBC click online)
Here is another link from the same source about how to keep yourself safe on the Internet from cyber attackers as nearly 2 lakh malicious programmes are said to be in existence most of which aiming at ordinary PC users. These problem programs can arrive via e-mail, instant messenger, through your internet connection or even your web browser if you visit the wrong website.

Like many subjects, information security comes with its own terminology and the jargon some of these are.
Adware
Blackhat
Bot
Botnet
Botnet herder
Bullet-proof hosting
Carder
Cash-out
Channel
Cross-site scripting
Dead-drop
DDoS
Drive-by download
Exploit
Firewall
Honeypot
IP Address
IRC
Keylogger
Malware
Man-in-the-middle
Packet sniffing
Phishing
Port
Roots
Script kiddie
Spyware
TCP
Trojan
Virus
Whitehat
Worm
Zero day
Zombie



China hosts nearly half of all malware sites
By Victoria Ho, ZDNet Asia Published on ZDNet News: Sep 4, 2007 8:57:00 AM

According to a report released Monday by antivirus company Sophos, China--including Hong Kong--hosted 44.8 percent of the world's infected sites in August. The U.S. ranked a distant second, hosting 20.8 percent of sites that contain malicious code.
The number of infected Web pages has also grown. Sophos said it detected an average of 5,000 new infected pages each day in the month of August.
The company warned that simply staying clear of sites hosted in the top three countries of China, the U.S. and Russia is not an effective method of avoiding malware.
"Hackers are hijacking Web sites around the world to make them point to malware on sites based in China, the U.S. and Russia," Carole Theriault, Sophos senior security consultant, said in a statement. (for more read source)