Cisco, which has just released its "2011 State-of-Security Report," observes that cyber-criminals prefer more-and-more of drone-like surveillance assaults against corporate networks to clandestinely-built armies of compromised PCs called botnets through which they can commandeer malware and/or spam campaigns.
Notably, the general count of PCs and networks that online-criminals compromised worldwide has declined annually starting 2009. That's because law enforcement globally has been able to successfully terminate massive botnets as also at times catch the perpetrators, Cisco reports. For instance, the Spanish and Slovenian police, together with the FBI, detained all who controlled and operated a botnet built with 12m infected PCs.
Moreover, starting 2009, the Global Adversary Resource Market Share Index of Cisco for tracing hijacked computers has come down to 6.5 from 7.2. This fall, instead of indicating that cyber-crime has become les, suggests that the criminals are moving towards capturing extremely sensitive e-docs out of the computer systems of manufacturing and defense sector companies on behalf of organizations, which remunerate very well, away from launching large-scale attacks. The new targets aren't only less risky but more lucrative too.
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