Cybercrime on rise in Thailand

[Nick]

Thailand's cybercrime ranking in the Asia Pacific region has risen due to an increase in the online population, while the global underground economy continues growing without any impact from the global economy, according to a new Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, which highlights key trends in cybercrime in 2009.

Nopchai Tangtritham, Senior Technical Consultant at Symantec Thailand, said the report showed that Thailand ranked 21 in global malicious activities in 2009 and shifted its rank in the Asia Pacific region to sixth place, compared to 2008 when it ranked seventh.

China, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are the top five countries in the region in terms of cybercrime.

Moreover, cybercrime is taking root in developing countries with an emerging broadband infrastructure, such as Brazil, India, Poland, Vietnam and Russia.

In 2009, these countries moved up the rankings as both sources and targets of malicious activity by cybercriminals. The report suggests that government crackdowns in developed countries have led cybercriminals to launch their attacks from the developing world, where they are less likely to be prosecuted.

The report also detected a significant growth of malicious codes. Symantec identified more than 240 million distinct new malicious programs, representing a 100 percent increase since 2008. Meanwhile, the Sality.AE virus, the Brisv Trojan and the SillyFDC worm were the threats most frequently blocked by Symantec security software in 2009.

The report also found that Downadup (Conficker) is still prevalent. It was estimated that Downadup was on more than 6.5 million PCs worldwide at the end of last year. Thus far, machines infected with Downadup/Conficker have not been utilised for any significant criminal activity, but the threat remains a viable one.

Nopchai continued that the report also found cybercriminals have turned their attentions toward enterprises for monetary gain from compromised corporate intellectual property (IP).

The attackers are leveraging the abundance of personal information openly available on social networking sites to synthesise socially-engineered attacks on key individuals within targeted companies.

Moreover, web-based attacks continued to grow unabated. Attackers leverage social engineering techniques to lure unsuspecting users to malicious websites. These sites then attack the victim's browsers and vulnerable plug-ins normally used to view videos or document files.

Last year saw a dramatic growth in the number of web-based attacks targeted at PDF viewers; this accounted for 49 percent of observed web-based attacks.

In addition, the attack toolkits make cybercrime easier and lowered the bar to entry for new cybercriminals, making it easy for unskilled attackers to compromise computers and steal information.

About the author


Writer: Suchit Leesa-nguansuk
Position: Reporter


ที่มา: bangkokpost.com