Phishing cost banks $1.2 billion

ANTI VIRUS software company Symantec published statistics that estimated US banks and credit card issuers lost almost $1.2 billion because of the phishing phenomenon in one year.

And meanwhile its Internet Security Threat Report claimed that zombified, or remotely controlled Windows based PCs, now number over 30,000 a day. These are machines that have programs on them allowing people's PCs to be controlled for a number of different purposes including co-ordinated denial of service attacks and mass-spamming emal attacks.

Symantec claimed that on one day during the first half of this year, 75,000 PCs were under the thrall of Lord Spamster and his evil band of black-hearted Kruras.

Of course, Symantec has an interest in these stats because it sells software which is intended to thwart such attacks.

Richard Archdeacon, Symantec's bishop of technical services, said: "We saw a steady increase in the number of bots during the reporting period. Variants of the Gaobot family alone accounted for 67,000 submissions".

Symantec estimates that it takes only around five days for crooks and Lord Spamster to exploit vulnerabilities in software. A staggering 95 per cent of the vulnerabilities between 1st January and June 30th this year were "highly severe".

The survey also reported that 4,496 Windows viruses and worms were detected during the same period - four and a half times the number during the same period in 2003.

The United States is the top country of attack origin by aggregate volume, said Symantec. And Latvia, Macau and Israel are the top three source countries of attack per 100,000 Internet users, the firm claimed. µ

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