One in 10 computers vulnerable to cyber attack

LONDON - A new report says that cyber criminals attack millions of computers every month and infect approximately 10 percent of them.

Cyber criminals are increasingly making use of “toolkits” - developed to methodically infect personal computers - so that illegally obtained information can be bought and sold.

Criminal servers were typically hosted in Ukraine - where more than a quarter were found - the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, reports The Telegraph.

Around nine million hacking cases were recorded in the Russian Federation, out of which 10.3 percent were successful.

The US and Britain attracted approximately half a million attacks each, which met with a similar level of success.

In a survey by security firm AVG, 165 internet domains were found to have attacked 12 million visitors over the course of two months. More than 1.2 million computers were subsequently infected.

The research looked at criminals using the so called “Eleonore toolkit”, which aims to use malware contained on specially created websites, to steal information such as credit card details, e-mails and insurance numbers.

The software targets known vulnerabilities, primarily in older versions of Microsoft’s web browser.

Internet Explorer 6 alone accounted for one-third of all infections. Apple Browser Safari proved the most resistant to Eleonore attacks, allowing just 2.78 percent of machines using it to be infected.

Adobe Acrobat and Sun Javascript also accounted for a significant number of infections.

AVG encouraged users to ensure they were using security software to protect their computers.