Symantec says:,,Hackers sell Ids for $14,,
Malicious documents help for cracking servers and for stealing data,according to a security report reelased Monday.Identity thieves are offering a person’s credit-card number, date of birth and other sensitive information for as little as US$14 over the Internet.
The data is sold on so-called “underground economy servers,” used by criminal organizations to hawk information they’ve captured through hacking, Symantec Corp. said in its Internet Security Threat Report, which tracked online trends from June to December 2006. The information can then be used for identity scams such as opening a bank account in a false name.
“U.S.-based credit cards with a card verification number were available for between US$1 to $6, while an identity — including a U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth and government-issued identification number — was available for between $14 to $18,” the report said.
Some 51 percent of the servers hosting the information were in the U.S.About 86 percent of the credit and debit card numbers available on those servers were issued by U.S. banks.
Symantec documented 12 zero-day vulnerabilities in the period from June to December 2006. Only one was found in its two prior six-month reporting periods, the company said.
Hackers have exploited some of those vulnerabilities by creating malicious documents in Microsoft Office and other software, said Ollie Whitehouse, a security architect at Symantec.
This a very new danger,because security programs ussually block the executables,not the Office applications,which usually appear legitimate.A bussinessman won,t refuse to receive on e-mail an office document or a jpg format file,because they usually are not seen as dangerous files.So the malicious documents sent as spam e-mail targeted to a specific employee have greater chance of being opened and this way the hackers ,,are in the house,,.The question is,where would anyone feel safe nowadays on the internet?If you have valuable data,you should be terrified by this fresh information,I personally certainly am.
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article
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