Social media proliferation helping hackers launch coordinated attacks

With the rapid expansion of social media, groups of hackers are increasingly launching closely coordinated attacks, an industry expert said in Kolkota on Saturday.

"The cyber crime scenario is turning murkier day by day... and social media is providing a fantastic platform for these people (cyber criminals)."

"Cyber criminals may not know each other but when they see money, they share their capabilities," R Vittal Raj, international vice president of Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) told IANS on the sidelines of a company event in the city.

Cyber criminals cooperate with each other over social media while executing major attacks.

He said despite organisations and chief information officers doing their best to take on hackers, the cyber criminals seemed to be able to deploy new strategies to identify loopholes in the IT system.

"A new type of threat called Advance Persistent Threat (APT) has emerged where the hacker is patient and takes his own time to understand the system, waits for the right opportunity and finally attacks in a major way," he said.

According to Raj, there had been a phenomenal jump in the number of cyber attacks since 2013.

Raj added, as consumers carried around and used more devices that contained their personal information, the need for security increased with around 90 per cent of consumers expressing fears about their information being hacked.

He told reporters during a media conference, that the most vulnerable sector was the financial sector including banking.

Interestingly according to ISACA's  IT Risk / Reward Barometer', around 69 per cent of the IT professionals said they were concerned about the decreasing levels of personal privacy.