Internet Security Learning Center

Online Threats Outpacing Law Crackdowns

The threat of phishing and botnet attacks does not appear to be going away anytime soon and is getting even more sophisticated, said U.S. Department of Justice representatives and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigators at the Computer Security Institute's NetSec conference. "Botnets are one of the greatest facilitators of cybercrime these days," said Wendi Whitmore of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations during a presentation. "Really the cybercrime arena is wrapped around botnets." The sophistication of cybercriminals makes it now harder than ever to catch them. The Anti-Phishing Working Group had almost 17,500 phishing Web sites reported in April. "We're seeing increasingly sophisticated groups online that are more indicative of crime groups," says Jonathan Rusch at the Justice Department. Botnets are usually controlled through Internet Relay Chat, but may move on to instant messaging and peer-to-peer technology, which will make it even harder for them to be detected. The main motivation for these attacks is financial gain by use of credit card numbers, cash, or company trade secrets. Whitmore advises Internet service providers to give security software to their users to reduce the threat of attacks.

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