Actually I'm pretty sure it's more than that.
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"][font style="font-weight: bold;" size="4"]Home computers targeted by hackers '50 times a day'[/font]Home PCs could be under attack from hackers over 50 times a night, suggests a BBC News Website experiment. [/p]The BBC News Website team set up a honeypot' PC – a computer that looks like a normal PC online but records everything that's done to it – in order to find out the dangers facing web users. [/p]Every single time the 'honeypot' was put online it was attacked. In one of the busiest nights of malicious online activity, the computer was attacked 53 times: [/p][ul][li]1 hijack attempt. PC suffered buffer overflow attempt to subvert web server built into Microsoft Windows. A successful attack would hand over control of the machine to a hacker[/li][li]2 "port scans" which look for weak spots in Windows software - reconnaissance by hackers seeking new victims.[/li][li]11 attacks by the 'Blaster' worm - success would have rendered the machine unusable[/li][li]3 attacks by the 'Slammer' worm - success would have left machine crippled and prone to crashing[/li][li]36 fake security announcements/adverts for fake security software posing as warnings. Reacting to these could leave a PC clogged with spyware.[/li][/ul]Over the course of the whole experiment, on average at least one attack an hour came from a dangerous computer bug with the ability to cripple an unprotected PC. And at least one attack per night was even more serious - an attempt to hijack the computer entirely – which could lead to the computer being turned into a 'zombie PC' and used to carry out criminal activity without the owner's knowledge.[/p]The experiment demonstrates the vulnerability of unprotected home PCs to malicious hackers. [/p]According to Symantec, 86 per cent of all targeted attacks on computers are aimed at home users. There are an estimated 200,000 malicious programs in existence. [/p]Starting today, the BBC News Website is running a whole week of special features looking at the issue of hi-tech crime and giving people advice on they can stay safe online. [/p]As part of the BBC News Website's 'Cracking Hi-Tech Crime[ specials the BBC also talks to the hi-tech criminals behind the viruses, 'phishing' e-mails and malicious programs putting home PCs at risk. [/p]One hacker the BBC spoke to claims to have earned $10,000 a day from computer crime, another says that they can hack into many online shops within 3-4 hours and sell the data on for anything between $100-500. Unconcerned about the risk of arrest the hacker adds: "How can a cop catch me? Catch me if they can!"[/p]
