Cybercriminals Increasing Attacks on Mobile Devices

Cybercriminals continue to increase efforts to break into computers to steal passwords and data, or take down critical infrastructure, and will to do so as long as they can get away with it, says a security analyst at a company that tracks such incursions.

“It all is financially motivated. As long as it is effective and working for them, we will continue to see it,” said Fred Touchette, senior security analyst for AppRiver, which released its mid-year Global Threat Report looking at web- and email-borne threats and malware attacks that took place in the first six months of this year. The report, which looked at data from more than 15 billion messages and millions of pieces of malware sent to AppRiver’s 45,000 customers, found nearly 13 billion of the messages contained spam and 171 million more carried viruses. Most of the malware blocked by AppRiver’s products was exploits, that is, code used to open a user’s device to allow a remote system to commandeer it for use as a botnet or to download a logger that can steal account numbers and passwords.