Hackers gear up for Valentine’s Day
Age | New Delhi, Feb. 4: This Valentine’s Day may see some unusual disturbances — leaving asi-de some groups’ usual act of chasing away love-struck couples.
Hackers across the world may be planning to launch a series of cyber attacks on February 14.
"We have already found one spam which is being circulated. This is the beginning of cyber attack on the name of Valentine," said a senior official from internet content security, APEC Trend Micro.
He said that the spam message leads users to fake gift card promotion site.
Hackers can put any kind of malware on the link of any Valentine mail, which would be a click away from its transfer to the computer of users, the official said, adding, "nowadays internet has become the biggest source of malware in the world".
Malware (derived from malicious software) is a software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s consent. It includes computer viruses, worms, trojans and also spyware, programming that gathers information about a computer user without permission.
"It is easy to target people on Valentine’s Day. If somebody gets a mail saying ‘be my Valentine’, the chances of him or her reading the mail is higher than any other message," said an Ernst and Young Partner.
Cyber security experts estimate that new malware is generated in every two second.
"Every time you have a big news the same day you will get a malware on it. If Obama is elected the President of USA, the same day you will get malware with his name on the title. Iphone is launched, you get that on the title. So hackers are using every opportunity or global event to circulate malware," said the expert.
According to Websense Security Labs 13.7 per cent of searches for trending news or buzz words led to malware.
"The web continues to be the most popular vector for data-stealing attacks. In the second half of 2009 it was found that 58 per cent of data-stealing attacks were conducted over the web," it added.
Pawan Bali
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