Cyber crime "better organised" in 2007

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Next year will see organised criminals join forces with hackers to create a better run cyber criminal economy, according to predictions by security experts.

Security company Websense said in its annual Security Predictions report, that 2006 was the year of the rise of cyber crime and the cyber criminal.

"We believe that 2007 will be the year of the cyber crime underground becoming better organised and a better run economy," the company's security research blog said. "As part of that the market for zero-day attack code will be very competitive. This will result in more numbers of zero-day attacks and better zero-day attacks both on the client and server-side."

The report also predicted that hackers will use flaws in anti-phishing toolbars to subvert user's computers. This year several high profile companies, such as Google and Netcraft, released anti-phishing toolbars embedded within the browser.

"Based on the success of some of these we believe that they will become targets of exploit code in order to disable or avoid their prevention mechanisms," the report said.

Websense also said that new web 2.0 technologies that allow users to create and upload content would lead to increase security problems. It also said social networking sites with large populations of users and the ability to link users through profiles and networks would create security risks.

"This is not unique to entertainment social networks either, as there are several business networks of users linking for employment recruiting, business development and other business-related reasons," the company said.

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