What happens when you lower the entry barriers to a lucrative criminal enterprise, where millions of dollars are to be made by the theft of usernames, passwords and credit card and Social Security numbers? Rather predictably, crime spikes.
But despite the rising tide of cyber crime, PandaLabs security researchers have found that the perpetrators on the whole lack the technical expertise of their predecessors. So they attribute much of the data-thieving Trojans and other malware to ready-made tools available on the black market.
eSecurity Planet has the story.
Cyber crooks are becoming more destructive and inventive, according to Panda Security’s latest cybersecurity and vulnerability report, despite the fact that they’re less skilled and technically proficient than their predecessors.
This trend, which includes a resurgence in the number of traditional viruses and adware scams infesting the Internet, can largely be attributed to do-it-yourself malware kits sold online for just a few hundred bucks that can turn anyone with opposable thumbs and an Internet browser into a botnet-building juggernaut.
“One detail that really surprised us was the seemingly low level of technical knowledge of the suspects,” PandaLabs researchers said in the company’s security report for the first three months of 2010. “Yet the explanation is simple: They obtained the tools they needed on the black market.”