'Net Attacks Down, Bot Networks Up

The average daily volume of Internet attacks declined in the last six months, according to Symantec Corp.'s Internet Security Threat Report. Released last week, the report is a snapshot of security events derived from monitoring 20,000 security devices.

From January through June 2004, Symantec calculated a daily attack rate of 10.6, compared with 12.6 from July through December 2003.

The good news ends there. Profit-motivated attacks are on the rise: 16% of all attacks were aimed at E-commerce sites, compared with 4% in past reports. Phishing scams and the use of spyware to pilfer user names, passwords, and financial information also increased, says Vincent Weafer, senior director of Symantec's virus research team.

The growth of bot networks, used to launch denial-of-service attacks, is staggering. At the beginning of this year, the company saw about 2,000 such networks; by June, there were 30,000.