Organized cybercrime has IT security experts scared

Unlike the script kiddies of yesterday, today’s cyber-criminals are sophisticated, organized and out for a profit, according to a McAfee report released Tuesday.

With the study, entitled “McAfee Virtual Criminology Report:
North American Study into Organized Crime and the Internet,” McAfee hopes to educate the marketplace about the threats it is facing online, said Jack Sabbag, vice-president and general manager for Canada at McAfee Inc. in Pointe-Claire, Que.

“It’s a new kind of risk,” said James Lewis, a senior fellow and director of the Technology and Public Policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., of the threat posed by professional criminals who are exploiting the Internet. And the threat of cyber-crime has 40 per cent of online shoppers and a third of those who use online banking services questioning whether they need to be more cautious about using these tools, he said.

The threat is getting worse -- two years ago, there were about 300 malicious threats emerging a month; today the figure has rocketed to 2,000, according to McAfee. This is largely due to a sharp increase in the number of bot nets. These are networks of computers that can be controlled remotely. One FBI estimate put the cost of cyber crime at about $400 billion in 2004 alone.