By MELVIN G. CALIMAG
The results of a study, released last November 16, by a California-based cyber security intelligence provider showed that hackers are on pace to unleash a record-setting feat this year.
Cyber security firm iDefense, a VeriSign-owned company, projected in its survey that there would be 6,191 keyloggers in 2005, a 65-percent increase from 3,753 keyloggers in 2004 and significantly more than the 300 in 2000.
Keyloggers are silently installed programs that record a victim’s keystrokes and sends them to hackers, putting tens of millions of Internet users’ finances, personal data and account information at risk.
Largely distributed by organized cyber theft groups, they are typically packaged with phishing emails or spyware — malicious code that than tracks victims’ online activity — often eluding traditional security defenses like antivirus software and firewalls.
"Keylogging is very effective method for hackers," said Joe Payne, vice president, VeriSign iDefense Security Intelligence Services. "Fraudsters can launch hundreds of keylogging attacks around the world in seconds, gathering sensitive data to conduct large scale monetary transfers for their illegal activities."
Once a keylogging program is activated, it provides hackers with personal data such as address, account numbers, mother’s maiden names or passwords – any strings of text a person might enter online.
Using this information to assume another’s identity, hackers run up charges averaging $3,968 (
R198,000) per victim, according to a Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. survey. Sixteen percent of victims were required to pay for at least some of this fraud, and spent an average of 81 hours to resolve their cases, the survey reported.
Hackers rely on a variety of techniques, including Internet Relay Chat and backdoor access to systems, to gather and filter logged keystrokes. Some groups create and sell keylogging programs to identity thieves, while others sell the stolen data. Still, others obtain the data and execute the fraudulent transactions.
"There are so many victims because so few know the risk or the early warning signs; you simply can’t stop what you can’t see," added Payne. "In addition to basic protection like up-to-date anti-virus programs and well configured firewalls, the best defense for keylogging is to carefully track the organizations and hackers who promulgate these programs."
iDefense said it maintains a malicious-code report database containing more than 115,000 unique threats to date, classified according to their functionality and type. All threats that log keystrokes were tallied for the time periods noted. Typically they were found in Trojans and adware or spyware codes.
Company analysts conduct open-source research on Internet criminal activity in 13 languages and track Internet cybercrime in more than 30 countries. It also publishes weekly on hacker groups, cyber crime, software vulnerabilities, phishing schemes and malicious code (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, and keyloggers).
