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
