Within a few months of this attack, a hacker organization used an ActiveX control to transfer funds by modifying Quicken files located on the local drives of people viewing their web page. Over 250 examples of other vandals have been documented since 1997. Usually, the victim is ignorant of a vandal attack, making it virtually impossible to even recognize an assault until it is too late. Unlike viruses, the full payload has already been delivered by the time the actual vandal program is identified. To make matters worse, the nature of vandals makes them ideal tools for people trying to target a particular user.
Someone can send the vandal as an email attachment or place it on a web site visited by the user.
Therefore, any protection against vandals needs to be proactive and needs to be able to cope with new, unknown vandals. The attacks can steal passwords, files, or other confidential data. Some examples of company information that could be exposed or include login names and passwords, secret project information, IPO plans, credit card numbers, confidential phone numbers, social security numbers, addresses, and more. Vandals can also delete, encrypt, or modify files on disk. Real-life examples of these attacks are described later in this paper.