{"id":334,"date":"2015-05-11T13:52:30","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T17:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smartalertz.services\/?p=334"},"modified":"2020-12-10T17:33:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T22:33:58","slug":"gangs-of-hackers-cause-cyber-breaches-to-spike-23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/2015\/05\/gangs-of-hackers-cause-cyber-breaches-to-spike-23\/","title":{"rendered":"GANGS OF HACKERS CAUSE CYBER BREACHES TO SPIKE 23%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/tech\/2015\/04\/14\/symantec-threat-report\/25738203\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\">By\u00a0 Elizabeth Weise\u00a0\u2022 Reposted from USA TODAY \u2022\u00a04\/14\/15<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Organized criminal gangs of hackers got smarter, faster and more ubiquitous last year, pulling off 312 major breaches against companies. That&#8217;s up 23% from the year before, Symantec&#8217;s 2014 Internet threat report found.<\/p>\n<p>Health care companies were a major focus of hackers, with 37% of breaches in that sector, compared with 11% in retail and 10% in education, the security company&#8217;s yearly look at the seamy underbelly of the Web found.<\/p>\n<p>Things are just as bad for individuals. Symantec, maker of Norton security software, found that fully 60% of all email is spam, though thankfully most email systems filter it out much of it.<\/p>\n<div id=\"module-position-ODPLeTyZYBY\" class=\"story-asset pullquote-asset\">\n<aside class=\"pull-quote\">\n<p class=\"pull-quote-item\">\u201cTen to 15 years ago, these were ad hoc networks of individuals motivated by ego. Now it&#8217;s almost entirely financial gain,\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"pull-quote-attribution\">Lillian Ablon, RAND Corp.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<p>That&#8217;s down from 66% in 2013, Symantec said. But the numbers are still enormous. An estimated 28 billion spam emails were sent per day in 2014, down from 29 billion a day in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>While slightly down, they were more dangerous than ever. One out of every 965 emails was a phishing attack, meaning an email that includes an attachment or link which, when opened, infects the victim&#8217;s computer, Symantec found.<\/p>\n<p>Ransomware also continues to grow. These digital extortion rings involve cyber thieves hijacking victims&#8217; systems and locking up their data, then demanding a ransom to unlock it.<\/p>\n<p>The thieves typically charge between $300 and $500 to free the files. Unfortunately, paying doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;ll get your data back.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Roughly 80% of the time, they don&#8217;t decrypt the files,&#8221; said Robert Shaker, senior incident response manager with Symantec.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And 100% of the time, you get put on the &#8216;payers&#8217; list, meaning they&#8217;ll hit you again later,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>These attacks more than doubled, with 8.8 million attacks in 2014, up from 4.1 million in 2013, Symantec found.<\/p>\n<p>Symantec also saw an increase in the organization and reach of hacking groups, which are moving faster than security staff trying to defend companies. For example, in April 2014, a major Internet security bug called Heartbleed was made public.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Within four hours of being announced, attackers were using it to break in and steal things,&#8221; said Kevin Haley, director of Symantec&#8217;s security response.<\/p>\n<p>Today, hacking is now just another type of international business enterprise, one that&#8217;s highly organized and increasingly well-funded and multinational.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ten to 15 years ago, these were ad hoc networks of individuals motivated by ego. Now it&#8217;s almost entirely financial gain,&#8221; said Lillian Ablon, a cyber-security researcher with the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.<\/p>\n<p>International digital thieves have built an entire criminal infrastructure in plain sight with little fear of prosecution, said Haley.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve found Google guides on where to buy the best stolen credit cards and YouTube guides on where to buy the best exploits,&#8221; Ablon said, using the hacker term for a software tool that takes advantage of a flaw in a computer system.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m waiting for Yelp reviews,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0 Elizabeth Weise\u00a0\u2022 Reposted from USA TODAY \u2022\u00a04\/14\/15 SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Organized criminal gangs of hackers got smarter, faster and more ubiquitous last year, pulling [&#8230;]<br \/><a class=\"excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/2015\/05\/gangs-of-hackers-cause-cyber-breaches-to-spike-23\/\"><i class=\"fa fa-share\"><\/i> Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigheadwebhost.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}