Cybercrooks turn attention to home PCs
The endless struggle between good and evil has spilled into cyberspace. Online criminals are becoming dramatically more organized, efficient and dangerous. This continuing battle, largely unseen by everyday Internet users, became briefly visible last week when Cupertino-based Symantec released its semiannual Internet Security Threat Report.
Symantec, in its report, said it detected 157,477 unique phishing messages in the first half of 2006, a stunning 81 percent increase from a year earlier. Symantec found 4.7 million computers worldwide had become part of botnets during the first half of 2006, divvied up among 6,337 separate operators. On any given day, an average of 57,717 botnet computers were active, launching an average of 6,100 denial service attacks.
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