From the analysis of Trend Micro, a company that specializes in computer security, you can clearly see that the year 2004 was a record year for the distribution of computerized viruses: 30 attacks, 28 of which medium risk and two high risk. Three worms held the first position: Bagle, Mydoom and Netsky, which, together with their variants, were the cause of 25 of the registered attacks.
Email was the preferred channel of diffusion of the several black hat hackers, but others chose to channel illegally to create more, serious damage. The indiscriminate sending of email messages and/or newsletters, Spam, without the consent of the receiver, is illegal. In some countries (the most developed ones), the authorities established that: to send email published without the consent of the receiver is illegal. If this activity is done systematically for profit, you also violate a criminal norm and could be reported to the judicial authorities.
There are several sanctions, and in the worst case, imprisonment. The considerable damage that these activities have done to companies and people has been enormous moreover another tragedy called Phishing, the name given to the system that captures information, like passwords or other personal information, used by many criminal hackers and digital con artists pretend to be reliable people with a real need for information send false emails containing eBay, Pay Pal graphics and official logos and also offer Banking and Credit Card services, asking you to fill in a form enclose in the same email or on a web page with your personal data, and often with your passwords or Credit Card numbers. The form has nothing to do with the official organism imitated in the mail so the password or Credit Card number ends up in the data bank of the black hat who had sent the false email. The experts define this illegal practice as a form of “Social Engineering”.
The latest news reported on this issue is that in order to fight the main threats coming through the web: Spam and Phishing, Europe and the United States have promoted two very distinct initiatives that will start at the same time. The intention is to defeat that virtual monster that has caused damage worth millions of Euro year after year, and according to the experts, will involve a considerable number of people. “Safer Internet Plus” is the project carried forward in Europe. The main target of the project is to beat Spam. The American project on the other hand is called “Digital PhishNet” and is based on the collaboration of several institutions, such as the FBI and private companies. The target is to identify and to bring to justice those people responsible for online fraud, thanks above all to the technique of Phishing.
Glossary
Computerized virus, means small programs able to change clone itself, self send in order to damage or make a network or a single machine vulnerable.
Spamming means the indiscriminate sending of email and/or newsletter messages, without the consent of the receiver.
According to the definition in “Wikipedia” the word Phishing is the capture of personal information, like passwords, personal information, the hacker hiding himself as a trustworthy person with a real need for that information. It is a form of “Social Engineering”.
Social Engineering is the most simple and reliable means of obtaining information that you could not learn otherwise for example username or even your personal data (address, telephone number, etc).
A Black Hat is a criminal hacker.