Every six months, Symantec releases a report on how bad things are getting on the Internet. Of course, they're in the business of protecting us from bad Internet things, but each of us has plenty of evidence of Internet doom and gloom in our own systems. But Symantec's platform of worldwide security protection devices gives them a better view than almost any other company.

The bad news? Worms, spyware, and viruses moved from the "look at me, I'm a hacker" mode to the criminal enterprise mode in far too many areas. This reminds me of the shift from stolen cars in suburbia being the work of drive and ditch teenagers to chop shop thieves supplying parts for dishonest repair shops.

Businesses suffered more Denial of Service attacks, as the number of attacks jumped over 51 percent from the first half of 2005 to the second half. Can you believe 1,402 DOS attacks per day in the second half of 2005? Since the best way to beat a DOS is more bandwidth, get your orders in now.

"Ransomware" became a new buzzword this past year. DOS attackers go away if paid, or don't launch a threatened attack. And how about that new virus that encrypts your files until you pay for the key? That's not in the Symantec report, but it's scary.

Not surprisingly, attackers targeted the financial services industries. With constant news about lost and stolen credit card information, and executives losing laptops full of customer data, hacking seems like more work than necessary. But perhaps the hackers read a Willie Sutton biography and are "going where the money is."

Phishing attacks have filtered down to smaller and smaller sets of potential victims. Now even customers of small banks in sparsely populated areas are being phished. Symantec tracked a 175 percent increase in phishing attacks from the last half of 2004 to the last half of 2005. Raw numbers? 1.5 billion phishing attempts, up from 1.04 billion.

Time of exploit after vulnerability announcement was 6.8 days. That's actually better than the 6.0 days in the previous period. And the time for a patch dropped from 49 days from 64 days. Good thing, since Symantec documented 40 percent more vulnerabilities this period.

Be prepared: go download this report, and take it with you during the next security tools budget meeting.

ITworld.com

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