Phishing: 60 compromised businesses behind half of UK attacks

[Audrey McNeil <audrey () riskbasedsecurity com>]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/phishing-60-compromised-businesses-behind-half-of-uk-attacks

These companies aren’t strictly responsible for the attacks; instead,
third-party hackers compromise the businesses’ servers and propagate
attacks by proxy.

The details come as part of a report (via TheNextWeb) on 57 new phishing
arrests in what the agency called ‘strike week’.

A total 60 companies were visited across the nation, with 5,531 compromises
discovered on the servers.

These servers were found to have been used for sending spam e-mail, as well
as various other attacks and phishing scams.

The arrests made specifically related to phishing, network intrusion, data
theft, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, cyber-enabled fraud,
and malicious software and virus development.

Deputy Chief Constable Peter Goodman, the National Policing Lead for
Cybercrime, commented: “Cybercrime is not victimless. A high-end
cyber-attack against financial institutions could have a far-reaching
impact on our economy.”

“Small and medium sized businesses can be bankrupted by a cyber-attack with
owners and staff losing their jobs. You could be seriously affected by the
publication of your personal information.”

One 21-year-old man was involved in a 2012 attack that saw the perpetrator
nab some 400,000 e-mails and passwords from Yahoo.

A 23-year-old man was also arrested after being suspected of breaking into
the US Department of Defence’s global comms systems last summer.

Andy Archibald, Deputy Director of the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit,
said: “These arrests around the country this week are a result of the
essential partnership activity with law enforcement, industry and
government that is at the heart of fighting cybercrime.”

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