While corporations are monitoring ports and using advanced security tools to fend off infection and attack, home users -- who have less technical sophistication -- are left more susceptible, sometimes even lacking firewall and anti-virus defenses.
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The bulk of home PC users are largely open to attack through the Internet, with nearly half of all broadband
connections running without a firewall, nearly 70 percent without updated antivirus protection, four in five users with spyware or adware on their machines, and nearly 90 percent of those victims unaware of the compromise.
The findings come from a home-user-focused study sponsored by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), which indicated that in the face of threats from viruses, spyware and adware, users suffer from confusion and a "perception gap" that has a large majority of them believing falsely that their computers and information stored on them are safe.
Home Security
The thrust of the study was to increase awareness and educate individual
users of their importance in the overall security of the Internet and
communications infrastructure.
"Using viruses, remote attacks, and drone machines, a single attacker
could mobilize thousands of compromised computers from unsuspecting users,"
said Dan Caprio, U.S. Department of Commerce deputy assistant secretary for technology
policy, in a statement.
"This study highlights just how important
it is for individual Americans to take their cyber-security seriously, not
just as a matter of personal safety, but as a matter of our country's
security as well."
Corporations Protected
While corporations have been forced to address computer security issues --
which if exploited can result in downtime and lost dollars -- home users
have remained heavy targets of attackers looking to infect and exploit their
systems.
Ken Dunham, iDefense director of malicious code intelligence, told
TechNewsWorld that home users are even at risk while setting up a new system
and installing software because attackers quickly pounce on new Internet protocol
(IP) addresses.
Dunham said that while corporations are monitoring ports and using advanced
security tools to fend off infection and attack, home users -- who have less
technical sophistication -- are left more susceptible, sometimes even lacking
firewall and anti-virus defenses.
"It's a nasty situation," Dunham said.
Lots of Bots
Dunham said the use of attack tools to compromise computers and then use
them for spreading malicious software, spamming or other illicit activity
is on the rise. The compromised computers, which are amassed by attackers
for bragging rights, denial of service (DoS) or other attacks, are known as
"zombies" or "bots."
"We have seen hundreds and hundreds of bots released this year," Dunham
said. "The number of families of [bot] variants is just shooting through the
roof.... If the trend continues, we can expect to see thousands
and thousands of new bot variants in 2005."
Making matters worse, Dunham said the latest malicious code making its
way onto unsuspecting users' machines -- in the form of viruses, spyware ,
Trojans and more -- is relatively easily created and more conspicuous than
ever.
Primordial Soup
Webroot vice president of threat research Richard Stiennon, whose company
focuses on spyware, said both home users and university computing environments
are highly exploited by computer attackers.
"Those two combined create this primordial soup of viruses out there,"
Stiennon told TechNewsWorld.
Stiennon agreed that malicious code is increasingly more covert, but
added that while corporations are generally better secured than consumers,
there continues to be a prevalence of spyware and even keystroke loggers on
enterprise IT systems.
"It's not necessarily true that corporations are totally invulnerable to
this stuff," Stiennon said.
Information Risk
For home users, the AOL/NCSA study also indicated that at the same time
consumers are unaware of their vulnerability, they are also leaving
important information at risk on home computers.
The study said while nearly 40 percent of home wireless networks are
completely open without any encryption, the vast majority of study
respondents indicated they keep sensitive information on their PCs and use
their home computers for banking, medical or other transactions.
"For the first time, we've reviewed the actual security protections that
consumers use for the sensitive information they keep on their home
computers, and results validate our purpose -- to raise awareness and change
behavior," said a statement from NCSA chairman Ken Watson.
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