OMEN
05-25-2007, 11:20 AM
SYDNEY: There are more computer hackers per head of population in New Zealand than anywhere else apart from Britain, a new report on "cybervandalism" across 10 countries has found.
New Zealand rated one hack for every 638 users, network security group TippingPoint, which conducted the survey, discovered.
The United Kingdom attracted the highest attack ratio, with one attack for every 479 internet users.
Australia was third on the list of 10 countries with one attack per 732 users.
The documented attacks were typically only surface-level intrusions, but such breaches were often a pre-cursor to more insidious penetrations of networks, Ken Low from TippingPoint said.
The other seven countries included in the report were Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, India and Japan.
Mr Low said politics figured in many intrusions.
Rob Lowe from the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) said vandalism was really only a small part of the growing problem of global cybercrime.
Financial gain through activities such as spam and phishing scams, not notoriety, was becoming the main game.
"The people who want to do something serious typically don't want to tip off the administrators of that website that they had this in mind or that they had actually compromised the website," he said.
StuffNZ
New Zealand rated one hack for every 638 users, network security group TippingPoint, which conducted the survey, discovered.
The United Kingdom attracted the highest attack ratio, with one attack for every 479 internet users.
Australia was third on the list of 10 countries with one attack per 732 users.
The documented attacks were typically only surface-level intrusions, but such breaches were often a pre-cursor to more insidious penetrations of networks, Ken Low from TippingPoint said.
The other seven countries included in the report were Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, India and Japan.
Mr Low said politics figured in many intrusions.
Rob Lowe from the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) said vandalism was really only a small part of the growing problem of global cybercrime.
Financial gain through activities such as spam and phishing scams, not notoriety, was becoming the main game.
"The people who want to do something serious typically don't want to tip off the administrators of that website that they had this in mind or that they had actually compromised the website," he said.
StuffNZ