AVG's Q3 Threat Report - Cyber criminals are a moving target

David Heath
Wednesday, 12 October 2011 22:42

Business IT - Security

Based on automated feedback from the vast majority of AVG's customers, the latest Threat Report paints a pretty dismal view of the current state of cyber security.

AVG's latest Threat Report (33 page PDF) was released today and with it's 'warts and all' view of the world, offers limited hope for improvement any time soon.

Highlighted in the report was the growing move away from credit card hacking and towards other forms of monetary fraud; in particular mobile phone fraud.

iTWire asked AVG's CTO Yuval Itzhak for his thoughts on the matter.  Itzhak first pointed to the fact that with banks applying more and more protection to credit card transactions, there are increasing challenges for the cyber crooks to make adequate use of these cards.  In fact he indicated that AVG's research showed that there was an increasing supply of fraudulently obtained card details and a decreasing demand for them.  Essentially the bottom is falling out of that market.

As the report points out, "Credit card data is still a target for cyber criminals and is sold on the black market for less than $5. However, this is almost "old fashioned" since people and companies are becoming more aware of the problem. Although awareness is increasing, it took quite a long time to educate people."

Itzhak points out that, "young people will not have a credit card, but they hold a payment device - that's a mobile.  In different territories where a credit card is not that popular, but mobile is, of course; hackers managed to increase their target market and even simplify the money collection from these people."

There are many issues to consider here.