Criminal hackers less competent than ten years ago

Although IT security threats have risen in number and diversity over the last decade, the actually technical competency of the hackers controlling the malware and botnets has actually decreased, according to Sebastian Zabala, project manager with Panda Security.

According to Zabala, the most interesting aspect of Panda's latest quarterly IT security report is that "the attack vectors are in the hands of less competent people than they were 10 years ago."

"Criminals are motivated by money. It is more economical for criminals to attack systems without a high degree of technical knowledge", he said, adding that this is now possible owing to the sophistication of the IT attack software at their disposal.