JEDDAH, 18 January 2007 — No one would deny that the Internet is one of the most revolutionary developments of the 20th century. The world we live in has indeed become a global village. Despite its many benefits and conveniences, the question still remains: How accessible is too accessible? Tragically nowadays the fact is that with every log-on, web users could be risking their family’s safety, finances or job. Even a person’s identity is up for grabs in a new kind of crime — cyber crime.
Ivon Rankin, a senior security consultant at Symantec, says his company is actively involved with government and commercial bodies in the Kingdom in order to improve security, strategy and incident response.
“A critical step is the rapid uptake of broadband technologies as well as the quick development of the telecommunication and IT infrastructures within the country,” he said.
Rankin added that the adoption of computer crime legislation would be a critical factor and give users an increased level of confidence and security in online transactions.
According to TrendMicro, global Internet threat research and support organization and producers of the TrendMicro 2006 Annual Threat Roundup, the number of cyber threats worldwide is on the increase. There is an average of 1.4 million cyber threats per month.
Crimeware has also gained notable prominence with 80 percent of threats involving viruses and worms. Phishing spam attacks also grew an average of 4,000 per month, an increase of 60 percent. On average, TrendMicro has identified more than two million pieces — or a 61 percent increase — of spam on the Internet each month.
The language used for writing malicious software is English, due to its links with the business world. English is followed by Japanese and Chinese which, with 25 percent of spam, is the third largest spam language.
Further analysis has proved that cyber crime behavior is also altering with a majority of attacks regionalizing targets to an individualized business group or specific global destination.
“Research of the IT market in the Kingdom is what encouraged me to co-found Globesoft, a Saudi Internet security company and partners of Symantec Global Security,” said Dr. Hussein Sindi, the company’s chief executive and professor of Computer Science at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz University. “Many businesses and government institutions who previously thought they had what they needed in terms of security were found to need much more.”
He mentioned three steps Saudi Arabia could take in order to ensure individual as well as professional protection. First, educate the population about the need for IT improvement in the Kingdom, stressing the use of passwords and ID protection. “Do not use passwords that are easy to crack such as birth dates and phone numbers.”
Second, Saudi Arabia needs to invest in the development, updating, and maintenance of software as a total package of operation protection.
Finally, the Kingdom needs to improve its local development of software and encourage the country to develop more localized solutions created by Saudi nationals.
With this in mind, this reporter launched her own investigation into how easy it really is to purchase hacking tools, spyware and phishing software right here in Jeddah. We found various salespeople in City Center and downtown area selling CDs for as little as SR10 and all contained MSN Hotmail sign-in “dummy pages” used for phishing scams, webcam spying programs and virus writing software.
Purchasing the software was alarmingly simple — just a matter of asking the salesperson for spyware, paying for it, and walking out. We even asked one shopkeeper, how he and others obtained the programs. “A lot of those who sell it usually write it themselves and distribute it without the knowledge of the computer shop owners,” he admitted.
