This virus is unusual in its coding and may be difficult to reliably identify, detect, and protect against. The virus is encrypted and armored to resist debugging by antivirus analysts. The survey of 538 computer security workers in the United States found that 85 percent had detected a security breach within the past year, and 64 percent suffered some type of financial loss due exploit vulnerabilities. Internet connections were cited most frequently as the point of attack, up from 59 percent to 70 percent in 2000. This is the sixth year CSI and the FBI's Computer Intrusion Squad, both based in San Francisco, have conducted the survey to measure computer crime in the United States.
Intrusions take place despite the presence of firewalls.
Net abuse flourishes despite corporate edicts against it. In the wake of last week's warning of international hackstortionists, Microsoft reissued security bulletins for a handful of NT vulnerabilities the crackers seek to exploit. To date, officials say more than 1 million credit card numbers have been stolen, as well as proprietary information and customer databases. The groups have made thinly veiled extortion threats for protection from other hackers. The hackers have been taking advantage of many organizations' failure to patch widely known vulnerabilities.