Rise in Targeted Attacks on Personal Data by Cyber Criminals

Cyber criminals are stepping up smaller, more targeted attacks as they seek to avoid detection and reap bigger profits by stealing personal and financial information, according to a report issued Monday. Symantec's Internet Security Threat report said during the second half of 2005 attackers continued to move away from broad attacks seeking to breach firewalls and routers and are now taking aim at the desktop and Web applications.

The latest report from the world's biggest security software maker said threats such as viruses, worms and trojans that can unearth confidential information from a user's computer rose to 80 percent of the top 50 malicious software code threats from 74 percent in the previous six months.

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