Nearly 1 in 5 Affected by Bots and by Keyloggers

According to the 7th annual Web@Work survey from Websense, nearly 1 in 5, or 17 percent of those surveyed, have had a keylogger launched by an employee and 1 in 5, or 19 percent, have been infected by a bot. 92 percent said they have been infected by spyware at some point.

According to the Web@Work survey, directionally, more organizations were hit by a hacking tool or a keylogger in 2006, as almost one in five (17 percent) of organizations have had employees launch a hacking tool or a keylogger within their network. This number has increased from 2005 in which 12 percent were impacted. A keylogger can be defined as one of the most dangerous types of spyware, which has the ability to record keystrokes and screen shots and can be replayed later to reconstruct a user session. These applications can be utilized by hackers to steal passwords and confidential information, which can then be used to provide full access to corporate systems and files.

The 2006 Web@Work survey also highlighted a new threat on the horizon-bots. A bot (short for robot) is software that can be unknowingly installed on an end-user’s PC that communicates with a command and control center. The command and control center has unauthorized control of many bot-infested PCs from a single point, and can be used for launching distributed Denial of Service attacks, acting as a spam proxy, and hosting malicious content and phishing exploits.

If you have been reading any of Wayne’s stories, you already know about bot’s and some of the other things people are trying to do to us today.

Also of note in the story, the use of usb drives has dramatically increased, with almost three quarters of those surveyed saying that someone has downloaded company information onto a usb drive of some kind. Here is a handy, dandy little tool to disable usb drives if you are looking. They also said most companies are still not blocking executables or html sent through instant messaging software, something that will have to change in the future as the number of exploits increase.

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