Organised crime and state groups are investing millions of dollars into the development of viruses that are becoming increasingly hard to fight off.
Professor David Stupples, professor of systems and cryptography of City University, said: “It’s professional. Whereas it was a cuddly hacker sitting in his room, now it’s organised crime paying millions and millions of dollars for the development of the software.
“It’s a new opportunity to make money.”
Professor Stupples, who will be speaking about the subject at Financial Adviser’s seminar on cyberfraud on 8 February, said that there were two types of viruses: those that were designed for espionage and those designed for sabotage.
He said they were able to defeat firewalls and conventional methods of defence because of the way they were constructed. According to Professor Stupples, the new generation of viruses would be developed by the introduction of a memory stick from outside the company.
Once introduced into the business’s system, the programme on the memory stick would search out the computer’s DNA and build itself inside the computer system to enable it to do its job. This will either be to search out information on the company or its activities, or to sabotage. The Stuxnet virus which attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities was a sabotage worm, whereas Flame was an espionage virus.
Once inside the system, these viruses can be switched on remotely, or instructed to self-destruct.
Professor Stupples said: “Worms can be put into banking systems and they can perhaps do insider deals and find out the stock movements.” He added that they could be instigated by people wanting to manipulate the market or find out information about mergers and acquisitions.
“The big thing is that the business world and commerce has not geared itself up to this type of worm and they’re strill trying to fight the hacker with firewalls. These superworms are starting to outmanoeuvre the traditional safety walls.”
To see Professor Stupples speak at the seminar, which takes place at the FT Building in One Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HL, email fa.letters@ft.com. The seminar takes place at 8.30 for a 9am start.
