HIGH-TECH CRIMES REVEALED: CYBERWAR STORIES FROM THE DIGITAL FRONT

The Growing Threat

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), run by Carnegie Mellon University, is a free, non-law enforcement resource for people to report computer and network intrusions. They have been around for a while, and have been collecting reports of computer incidents since at least 1995. A review of the data that CERT has compiled over the years clearly shows that in spite of our best efforts to improve computer security, computers appear to be attacked much more often than in the past. It seems as if we are losing the battle.

Figure 9-1 shows that the number of reported security vulnerabilities has increased year after year until 2003, where there was a slight drop from the prior year. Security vulnerabilities are specific methods ...