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Symantec, in their recent Internet Security Threat Report, has found that Denial of Service (DOS) attacks have declined against service providers by 15 percent.

"The thing is that DoS attacks are loud and risky," Yazan Gable, security response engineer for Symantec, stated in the blog post. "Whenever a bot-network owner carries out a denial of service attack they run the risk of losing some of their bots."

This has led them to conclude the DOS attacks do not pay. But that doesn't mean cybercriminals are just letting their botnets rust away from disuse, because in the same period DOS attacks have declined, spam has increased. Lately, botnet operators are focusing increasingly on bulk spam, namely penny-stock pump-and-dump scams, as well as trying to steal financial data.

A number of underground e-commerce sites have been found where criminals can buy and sell stolen financial data, which range from $30 dollars for log-on credentials to $250 for account info for a major financial institution. Also, prices for credit card number with the verification PIN included run from $1 to $6 dollars while social security numbers and bank account info can cost $14 to $18 dollars.

Just another week in As The Security World Turns.

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