Showing posts with label INDIAN HACKERS. Show all posts

GOOGLE Vs MICROSOFT  

Posted by prasanth


In that decade, the search engine company has quickly emerged as the most successful business on the Web, and many expect it to dominate the next era of computing as thoroughly as Microsoft dominated the era of personal computers.


Google's age: 10
Microsoft's age: 33


Microsoft's revenue at age 10: $140 million
($279 million in today’s dollars)


Google's net income in the last 4 quarters: $4.85 billion
Microsoft's net income in the last 4 quarters: $17.6 billion


Google's revenue per employee: $1 million
Microsoft's revenue per employee: $672,000


Number of tech companies with a market value larger than Google's: 3 (Microsoft, I.B.M. and Apple, in that order)


Worldwide searches per hour on Google in July: 65 million
Worldwide searches per hour on Microsoft in July: 3.1 million

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WORLD'S SPAMING COUNTRIES  

Posted by prasanth

The world's top 10 spamming countries account for 55 per cent of the total global spam volume, says Secure Computing, a public company that provides enterprise security solution, in its Internet Threats Report.

Spam is the unwanted e-mail messages that you find in your mail box. It is primarily electronic junk mail sent to your e-mail account or even your cellphone.

Spammers are continuing to use pop culture and current events (US elections, Olympics, etc) to entice end users into responding or clicking on links whose sole purpose is to download malware.

So which countries are the world's biggest spammers?

10. South Korea, 2.87%
South Korea sends slightly less spam than India, but with a contribution of 2.87 per cent to global spam it is the world's 10th largest spammer.

9. India, 2.99%
India is one of the top 10 spammers in the world and it accounts for 2.99 per cent of global spam.

The country is the world's 9th largest spammer, and as its Internet infrastructure improves with rising prosperity the amount of spam or unsolicited e-mails emerging from India too is likely to multiply.

8. Colombia, 3.09%
Colombia takes the 8th spot amongst the world's biggest spammers and accounts for per cent of global spam.

Here's how to curb spamming:
When you send e-mails to many people at the same time, use the BCC (blind copy) field so that the recipients are unable to see the other addresses. This also helps curb spamming.
The government too can help curb spam by enacting legislation that punishes offenders.
Don't give out your e-mail ID on instant messengers, chat rooms, et cetera.

7. Great Britain, 3.37%
Great Britain accounts for per cent of global spam and is ranked 7th largest spammer.

Tips to be secure:
Being aware of spam and of ways to secure yourself too helps curb the menace.
You should never buy anything through an unsolicited e-mail. By buying through such messages, you help keep such business economically viable.

Instantly delete unsolicited e-mails, for such messages can also harm your machine by spreading viruses or worms.

6. China, 3.49%
China ranks 6th among the The world's top 10 spammers and accounts for per cent of global spam.

More ways to fight spam:
Upgrading your Internet security to ensure that spammers can't send spam via your computer.
Never reply to a spam message and never click on any links, especially 'unsubscribe' links in such messages because then you give yourself away as a real user and thus leave yourself open to be spammed even more.

5. Italy, 4.32%
Italy, the world's 5th largest spammer, accounts for per cent of global spam.

How to secure yourself from spam:
Various methods to save yourself from incoming spam exist. These include:

Using spam-filtering software. Trend Micro, Symantec, Computer Associates, Sophos (Satcom), McAfee, Netscreen, Prime Infotec, GajShield Infotech and Websense provide specialised anti-spam solutions in the Indian market.

A spam filter is a piece of software that sorts incoming e-mail messages and blocks those that it thinks are spam. While filtering can be very useful, it's not perfect as sometimes filters fail to identify spam-and they mistakenly block a genuine, non-spam message. Adjusting the filter settings can help minimise these risks. To prevent this one can also choose to direct spam into a special folder set aside for reviewing all messages that the software filter tags as spam.

4. Brazil, 5.29%
Brazil, with per cent of global spam, ranks 4th in the world.

Spammers continue to use pop culture and current events like the Olympics or US elections to lure users into responding or clicking on links whose sole purpose is to download malware.

3. Turkey, 6.51%
Turkey ranks number 3 in the world when it comes to spamming. It accounts for per cent of global spam.

Among the types of spam, male enhancement, product replica, prescription drugs, gambling, pornography, debt job offer, phishing were the major contronutors.

2. Russia, 6.71%
Over 6.7 per cent of global spam emerges from Russia, making it the world's second largest spammer.

The Secure Research report says that there was a 45 per cent increase in the average number of porn sites found daily since January 2008.

50 pre cent of all Web sites' content is now in non-English languages, and this too is adding to the growing spam volume.

1. United States, 16.56%
The United States is the world's largest spammer and accounts for more than 16.5 per cent of global spam.

Spam is up 280% from last year (at this time). This year's peak on spam volume was March 27 at 185 billion spam messages. Since March we have seen spam steadily decrease.

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WORLD'S BIGGEST HACKER IS AN INDIAN(8 MILLION VICTIMS)  

Posted by prasanth

An unknown Indian hacker is being charged with the greatest cyber-heist in history, for allegedly helping a criminal gang steal identities of an estimated eight million people in a hacking raid that could ultimately net more than £2.8 billion in illegal funds.

An investigation by Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper discovered, that late on Thursday night, a previously unknown Indian hacker successfully breached the IT defences of UK's Best Western Hotel group's online booking system. He then sold details of how to access it through an underground network operated by the Russian mafia.

There are no details yet on how the hacker was identified to be an Indian, and if a probe is on to identify the person. It is also not known if the hotel chain has alerted the police about the heist.

The attack scooped up the personal details of every single customer that has booked into one of Best Western's 1312 continental hotels since 2007. Amounting to a complete identity-theft kit, the stolen data includes a range of private information including home addresses, telephone numbers, credit card details and place of employment.

"They've pulled off a masterstroke here. There are plenty of hacked company databases for sale online but the sheer volume and quality of the information that has been stolen in the Best Western raid makes this particularly rare," said security expert Jacques Erasmus, an ex-hacker who now works for the computer security firm Prevx.

"The Russian gangs who specialise in this kind of work will have been exploiting the information from the moment it became available late on Thursday night. In the wrong hands, there's enough data there to spark a major European crime wave," Erasmus added.

Although the security breach was closed on Friday after Best Western was alerted by the Sunday Herald, experts fear that information seized in the raid is already being used to pursue a range of criminal strategies.

These include:

  • Armed with the numbers and expiry dates of customers' credit cards, fraudsters are equipped to make multiple high-value purchases in their victims' names before selling on the goods.
  • Bundled together with home addresses and other personal details, the stolen data can be used by professional organised criminal gangs which specialise in identity theft to apply for loans, cards and credit agreements in the victims' names.
  • Because the compromised information included future bookings, the gang now has the capacity to sift through the data and sell "burglary packs", giving the home addresses of local victims and the dates on which they are expected to be away from their home.

Although the nature of internet crime makes it extremely difficult to track the precise details of the raid, the Sunday Herald understands that a hacker from India - new to the world of cyber-crime - succeeded in bypassing the system's security software and placing a Trojan virus on one of the Best Western Hotel machines used for reservations. The next time a member of staff logged in, her username and password were collected and stored.

"Large corporate companies rely on anti-virus products to protect their infrastructure, but the problem with this approach is that these products only detect around 60 per cent of threats out there. In the right hands, viruses can easily bypass these programs, as was the case here," explained Erasmus.

With eight million people staying in the hotel group's 86,375 continental rooms every year, gaining access to the system is a major coup for the cyber-criminals responsible. Given that criminals now have access to all bookings from 2007-2008, and based on the FBI-sponsored Internet Crime Complaint Center's reports that the average victim of Internet crime loses £356, they are sitting on a potential haul of at least £2.84 billion.

Best Western Hotels closed the breach at around 2 pm on Friday afternoon. Stressing that staff are fully aware of the potential seriousness of the attack, the company reassured customers that it is now taking appropriate action, Sunday Herald said.

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