Fewer companies suffer Internet attacks

Sep 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By JENNIFER O'KEEFE

           

In a preliminary Security Threat Report released by managed security service provider Riptech Inc., Alexandria, Va., Israel continues to show the highest rate of attacks per Internet capita at 26.16 percent. (The United States was not in the top ten of this category.)

The report is a comparison of Internet attack trends detected during the past two six-month periods. It uses new measurements to provide information on the activity of countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. Department of State, level of aggression on a scale of one to ten, effect of security management on attack activity and analysis of attacker profiles.

Comparison of the past six-month period (January 1 to June 30, 2002) to the previous period (July 1 to December 31, 2001) reveals 23 percent of companies suffered at least one severe attack during the past six months, and 43 percent during the previous six-month period. This progress is most likely a result of improved defensive posture of Riptech clients, the report says. Seventy percent of power and energy companies suffered at least one severe attack during the past six months, up from 57 percent during the previous period.

There was little change in the top ten attacking countries between the two periods, with the exception of the Netherlands, which replaced Japan at number ten. The United States suffered 29.6 percent of all attacks in the previous six-month period and 26 percent during the past six months. South Korea was behind the U.S. at 8.9 and 8.2 percent respectively.

During the last six months, the attack rate from the group of seven countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism was 20.4 attacks per 10,000 Internet users, compared to the average attack rate per capita of 14.27 percent.

Attack aggression is intended to measure the relative sophistication and persistence of each attacker for every individual attack detected. The aggression scale is based on multiple factors including the number of attack signatures triggered by the attacker, number of companies targeted by the attacker and the duration of an attack.

An analysis of this rate suggests that of all attacks detected by Riptech in the past six months, a majority of attackers exert a moderate degree of aggression. Highly aggressive attacks are categorized by indicators such as extensive investment of time and reliance on multiple attack signatures. Riptech observed less than 500 attackers launched highly aggressive attacks and less than 1 percent of all attacks were qualified as highly aggressive. Twenty percent of power and energy companies and 19 percent of high tech companies experienced one or more highly aggressive attacks during the past six months.

The trends derived from this data will likely be similar in the final version of the report, however the final trends may vary if errors are discovered. These sample findings are intended to provide a general sense of the type of data that will be included in the report.

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