Email viruses most likely to strike in the morning

Security research firm Trustwave reported out from their findings that Email viruses most likely to strike in the morning.


Original Post from GMA News Online:

The period between 8 and 9 a.m. EST (9 to 10 p.m. Manila time) appears to be a rush hour of sorts for cybercriminals to send out computer viruses, a security research firm said.

Security research firm Trustwave said this may be an attempt to catch people who tend to check their emails at the start of the day, according to a report on tech site CNET.

CNET quoted Trustwave's report as saying the spike "is likely an attempt to catch people as they check e-mails at the beginning of the day."

It said Trustwave's study used real-world data collected in 2011 from more than 300 incident response and forensic investigations in 18 countries.

Also, the study analyzed 16 billion e-mails from 2008 to 2011 to check security trends and vulnerabilities.

Detected after 6 months

Trustwave's study also indicated viruses shot up in August and reached a peak in September.

Overall, three percent of viruses sent through e-mail came in August and September, it said.

"The time from compromise to detection in most environments is about six months. Therefore, if these methods were successful, March 2012 should be a busy month for incident responders and breach disclosures," CNET quoted Trustwave as saying.

Customer records on top

Customer records appeared to top the list of what cybercriminals are looking for, making up for 89 percent of the breached data investigated.

Trade secrets and intellectual property are a distant second with six percent.

Industries with franchise and chain stores are top targets because they often use the same IT systems across stores.

"If an attacker can break into one store's system, most likely they can get into several locations. More than one-third of 2011 investigations happened in franchise businesses," CNET said in citing the Trustwave report.

Weak passwords

Yet another finding was that global businesses have weak passwords.

An analysis of more than two million business passwords showed the most common password used by global businesses is "Password1." — TJD, GMA News
 

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