Internet security company Symantec reports that the level of international cyber attack activity dropped last year. However, the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report says the number of documented vulnerabilities has increased.
The levels of total cyber attack activity decreased by 6% in the second half of last year compared with the first half, says Symantec. Companies averaged 30 attacks per company per week, down from 32 attacks.
Damage caused by recent blended threats, such as Opaserv, was considerably less than that caused by old threats, such as Code Red.
According to the report, 85% of all attacks reported were classified as pre-attack reconnaissance, while the remaining 15% were classified as various forms of exploitation attempts.
However, Symantec also documented 2 524 new vulnerabilities in 2002, an increase of 81.5% over 2001.
Symantec believes that the possibility of future, high impact, blended threats continues to represent one of the greatest risks to the Internet community. Blended threats combine the characteristics of viruses, worms, trojan horses and malicious code with server and Internet vulnerabilities in an attack.
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