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How Cyber Spies Infiltrate Business Systems

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bob Violino reports on the quiet threat to today's business: cyber spies on network systems. According to observers, 75 percent of companies have been infected with undetected, targeted attacks — ones that typically exploit multiple weaknesses with the ultimate goal of compromising a specific account. Such attacks often begin by correlating publicly available information to access a single system. From there, the entire environment can be gradually traversed enabling attackers to place monitoring software in out-of-the-way systems, such as log servers, where IT often doesn't look for intrusions. 'They collect the data and send it out, such as via FTP, in small amounts over time, so they don't rise over the noise of normal traffic and call attention to themselves,' Violino writes. 'There's probably no way you can completely protect your organization against the increasingly sophisticated attacks by foreign and domestic spies. That's especially true if the attacks are coming from foreign governments, because nations have resources that most companies do not possess.'"

6 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thought of this sort of thing in 2004 by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Funny

    I know... they might upload a virus into their shipping fleet's ballast control computers and blame it on you so the government can trash your shit for them. But it should all work out in the end, though, and you'll get the girl.

  2. Re:Cyber Spies by teh+moges · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like your idea of calling non-cyberspies 'meatspies' from now on.

  3. global search and replace by khasim · · Score: 2, Funny

    s/cyber/blogosphere/g

    Amazingly enough, it has the exact same relevance.

  4. Re:Cyber Spies by RJFerret · · Score: 2, Funny

    When are we going to get over this cyber prefix bs?

    Yes, let's get with the modern era and lingo, they will henceforth be known by the friendlier tech term: iSpy.

  5. Re:fire up nmap and start scanning (Re:Oh noes!) by mandelbr0t · · Score: 2, Funny

    Four jobs ago, I used to fire up nmap and scan the internal network, then tell the network admins where the trojans were! (No, I never put them there.)

    That would explain why it was four jobs ago...

    --
    "Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
  6. Re:Cyber Spies by Sr.+Zezinho · · Score: 2, Funny

    So cybersex is an example of proper usage of the prefix?

    --
    os trabalhos e os dias: http://zmoreira.net