Major Retailers Experience 161% Increase in Attempted Hacker Attacks, According to S...( ATLANTA Dec. 4 /- SecureWorks(R) a le...),Health

ATLANTA, Dec. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- SecureWorks(R), a leading Security as a Service provider, reports they have seen a 161% increase in the number of attempted hacker attacks they are blocking for their retail clients. Attempted attacks increased from an average of 56,000 per client per month in the first six months of the year to 133,000 per client per month for the last five months. The attack statistics represent the attack activity for 36 major retail corporations located across the country.

SecureWorks' security researchers attribute the overall increase to a rise in attempted authentication attacks, SQL Injection attacks and network scans.

"We saw a large increase in hackers looking for open ports, as well as those trying to identify the applications and other services our retail clients were running," said Wayne Haber, director of architecture for SecureWorks. "An increase in network scans is often a red flag because many times it is followed by attacks specifically targeted at the organization's services," said Haber." "Attempted network scans against our retail clients increased 61% in 2008 going from an average of 56,000 per client per month in the first six months of the year to 90,000 per client per month in the last five months of the year," continued Haber.

The number of attempted authentication attacks -- attacks used to compromise user names and passwords -- increased steadily throughout the year, jumping from an average of 6,000 per client per month in the first six months of the year to an average of 34,000 per client per month in the last five months. The numbers continued to increase through the most recent month, November, where authentication attacks spiked to 137,000 per client per month. "It is not surprising that the attempts to steal customer credentials greatly increased just before the holiday shopping season. The November authentication attacks also followed a significan
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