Computer security incidents rise dramatically

The Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) based at The University of Queensland has recorded a dramatic increase in reported computer security incidents.

"In the first two months this year we've recorded 62 percent - almost two thirds - of the entire reported total for 1999," Senior Security Analyst Rob McMillan said.

"The first indications of this increase appeared in late 1999."

AusCERT is one of the few organisations in Australia recognised internationally as an authoritative source of expertise and information about Internet security. It provides a single, trusted point of contact in Australia for the computer community to deal with computer security incidents and their prevention.

Mr McMillan said AusCERT was publicly releasing statistics about the growth of such attacks for the first time since it was founded in 1993 to reconfirm to industry and government that issues of Internet security and attacks from the Internet showed no signs of diminishing.

The statistics chart a rapid growth in security incidents in the past few years:

Year Incidents
1993 110
1994 171
1995 191
1996 309
1997 572
1998 1342
1999 1816

"1123 incidents were reported to AusCERT by the end of February 2000, compared with 235 incidents by the same time last year," Mr McMillan said. The largest reported increases were in the commercial and education sectors.

"Much of the activity continues to be network probing and other low level activity. It is possible that part of this activity is linked to the Distributed Denial of Service attacks on high profile sites that were highlighted by the media during February," he said.

"A number of severe incidents in which systems have been compromised to a privileged level have also had a common intruder signature. AusCERT members were advised of this signature on March 2."

Mr McMillan said the increased number of reported incidents was believed to be due to an increase in activity on Australian and New Zealand networks. It was also due partially to the implementation late last year of an automated reporting system that captures some of the activity that up to now has otherwise been unreported by the victim sites.

Media: For further information, contact Rob McMillan or Eric Halil at AusCERT, telephone 07 3365 4417 or .