TechPulse 360

The online underworld is becoming increasingly sophisticated and brazenly effective at launching cyber attacks, even against legitimate Web sites, according to an annual security assessment by Cisco Systems.

These criminals send almost 200 billion spam e-mail message a day, perhaps tricking consumers one time in a 100,000 mailings. Unable to afford to pay for computer systems to handle such volume, they infect ordinary PCs and turn hijacked Internet-linked computers into botnets they control.

Spam e-mail is worldwide problem

Along with assigning these machines to send e-mail, they harness the botnets against legitimate servers, spreading malware to unsuspecting victims and hacking into Web mail accounts. Once inside they trigger the account to send malicious e-mail to the names in its address book.

According to the report, release Monday, online hackers are becoming more specialized and attacks better targeted.

For instance, this year’s attacks sough to take advantage of some of the world’s most important events.  Fake ticket scams emerged for the Beijing Olympics and malicious sites capitalizing on Barack Obama’s victory. On one fake Obama site, his victory speech played while criminals tried to download malicious software to steal personal information.

Malware for mobile phones spread during the year, particularly in Asia, where mobile phone use is high

The report found:

*Spam makes up about 90 percent of worldwide e-mail;
*Vulnerabilities in virtualization software tripled to 103 from 35 in 2007;
*Disclosed vulnerabilities in computing products rose 11.5 percent and;
*Threats originating from legitimate sites rose 90 percent.