Web-based cyber attacks increased 93 percent in 2010, according to the Internet Security Threat Report released on April 5 by security firm Symantec. The report said that the attacks increasingly focused on vulnerabilities found in browser plug-ins, mini programmes such as Adobe Flash that sit inside the browser, and that computers, once infected, were harder to disinfect than they were in the past.
The report said that more than 286 million different variants of malware were detected in 2010 and that on average each successful corporate attack exposed 260,000 personal identities.
Symantec blamed the prodigious rise in attacks on the widespread availability of attack toolkits - software packages that allow even novice programmers to launch malicious software attacks.
There was a large increase in the number of vulnerabilities on smartphones and in those targeting users of Facebook and Twitter, the report said. The US experienced the most malicious activity with 19 percent of the world-wide total and was also the largest source of attacks at 22 percents. The health-care industry had the highest number of data breaches, but the adult entertainment category had the most search terms that resulted in visits to malicious websites, the report said.