KL a cyber zombie city, says US firm

KL a cyber zombie city, says US firm
JO TIMBUONG
17 April, 2008

(The Star)KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA: The capital has more bot-infected personal computers than any other city in the Asia-Pacific region, making Kuala Lumpur the "honeypot" for hackers, security software company Symantec Corp said.

The US-based company estimates that there are 900,000 bot-infected PCs in the Asia-Pacific region (including Japan) and 99,000 are in this city. The next highest is Beijing (81,000) and Bangkok (63,000). At the bottom of the list is Seoul (27,000).

Also, most of these PC users would never know that their computers are being misused, said Symantec.

"Malaysia is a prime target for cyber criminals, from which to launch malicious attacks," said Kannan Velayutham, a Symantec Malaysia consultant for enterprise security.

Bot-infected PCs, also known as "zombies", are unsecured computers that have surreptitiously been taken over by hackers, which they can use as part of a network of machines for their schemes, such as spamming, identity theft and online scams.

Infection can be through Trojan programs, in e-mail messages or from unscrupulous websites, that sneak into PCs with outdated anti-virus programs or are not safely behind firewalls.

Symantec's 13th Internet Security Threat Report, which was released on Tuesday, showed that Kuala Lumpur had moved up six notches to become the Asia-Pacific city with the most bot-infected machines. The findings were based on data collected between July and December last year.

Kannan said the growing number of bot-infected PCs in the capital was partly due to Malaysia's increasing broadband penetration.

Based on figures by industry regulator, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, there were about 400,000 new broadband Internet users last year. In total, there are 1.4 million Malaysians subscribing to broadband now.

"They (new users) are less suspicious of questionable e-mails, or do not realise the risks of downloading freeware, such as games, wallpapers, photos and video, from the Internet."

Another potential source of infection is pirated software, Symantec said.

"Illegal software could be laced with malicious programs to compromise your computer," said Kannan.

Internet users should be concerned about the security of their computers because their personal information - such as passwords, bank account numbers, and financial records - are also at risk from bot-infections.

Symantec suggests several precautions including:

• Always have an updated anti-virus program running;
• If your computer is always on the Internet, install a firewall for added protection; and,
• Never download from an untrusted website or open suspicious e-mail messages. Delete it.