Category Archives: DDoS News

Distributed Denial of Service `DDoS` mitigation a key component in network security

`Attacker motivations behind distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) have shifted away from solely financial (for example, the extortion of online gambling sites and retailers) toward socially and politically motivated campaigns against government websites, media outlets and even small businesses. Hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous, LulzSec and others have used DDoS attacks to damage a target’s reputation or revenue since December 2010 when Anonymous began targeting corporate websites that opposed Wikileaks. At that time, attacks were conducted using botnets to flood sites’ servers with large quantities of TCP or UDP packets, effectively shutting down the sites for hours at a time. Today, botmasters have begun to use more complex strategies that focus on specific areas of the network, such as email servers or Web applications. Others divert security teams’ attention with DDoS flood attacks while live hackers obtain the actual objective, valuable corporate or personal information. This tactic was utilized in the infamous attack against Sony in 2011, according to Carlos Morales, the vice president of global sales engineering and operations at Chelmsford, Mass.-based DDoS mitigation vendor Arbor Networks Inc. Rapid growth in the sophistication of DDoS attacks combined with the prevalence of attacks across markets makes for a dangerous and fluid attack landscape. Security researchers and providers agree that it’s becoming more important for companies to protect themselves from denial-of-service attacks, in addition to implementing other measures of network security. DDoS attacks can quickly cripple a company financially. A recent survey from managed DNS provider Neustar, for example, said outages could cost a company up to $10,000 per hour. Neustar’s survey, “DDoS Survey Q1 2012: When Businesses Go Dark” (.pdf), reported 75% of respondents (North American telecommunication, travel, finance, IT and retail companies who had undergone a DDoS attack) used firewalls, routers, switches or an intrusion detection system to combat DDoS attacks. Their researchers say equipment is more often part of the problem than the solution. “They quickly become bottlenecks, helping achieve an attacker’s goal of slowing or shutting you down,” the report stated. “Moreover, firewalls won’t repel attacks on the application layer, an increasingly popular DDoS vector.” For those reasons, experts suggest companies with the financial and human resources incorporate DDoS-specific mitigation technology or services into their security strategy. Service providers such as Arbor Networks, Prolexic and others monitor traffic for signs of attacks and can choke them off before downtime, floods of customer support calls, and damage to brand or reputation occur. Purchasing DDoS mitigation hardware requires hiring and training of employees with expertise in the area, but experts say that can be even more expensive. “In general, it’s very hard to justify doing self-mitigation,” said Ted Swearingen, the director of the Neustar security operations center. All the additional steps a company has to take to implement their own DDoS mitigation tool, such as widening bandwidth, increasing firewalls, working with ISPs, adding security monitoring and hiring experts to run it all, make it a cost-ineffective strategy in the long term, he said.  Three percent of the companies in Neustar’s survey reported using that type of protection. In some cases, smaller DDoS mitigation providers even turn to larger vendors for support when they find themselves facing an attack too large, too complex or too new to handle on their own. Secure hosting provider VirtualRoad.org is an example. The company provides protection from DDoS attacks for independent media outlets in countries facing political and social upheaval—places where censorship by the government or other sources is rampant, such as Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe. A specific niche like that in a narrow market with small clients doesn’t usually require extra support, but VirtualRoad.org has utilized its partnership with Prolexic a few times in the last year, according to CTO Tord Lundström. They have their infrastructure to deal with attacks, Lundström said, but they also have parameters for the volume and complexity that they can handle. When it gets to be too much, they route the traffic to Prolexic, a security firm that charges a flat fee regardless of how many times you are attacked. “It’s easy to say, ‘We’ll do it when an attack comes,’ and then when an attack comes they say, ‘Well, you have to pay us more or we won’t protect you,’” Lundström said of other services. Extra fees like that are often the reason why those who need quality DDoS protection, especially small businesses like VirtualRoad.org clients, can’t afford it, he said. The impact can be worse for companies if the DDoS attack is being used as a diversion. According to a recent survey by Arbor Networks, 27% of respondents had been the victims of multi-vector attacks. The “Arbor Special Report: Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report,” which polled 114 self-classified Tier 1, Tier 2 and other IP network operators from the U.S. and Canada, Latin/South America, EMEA, Africa and Asia, stated that not only is the complexity of attacks growing, but the size as well. In 2008, the largest observed attack was about 40 Gbps. Last year, after an unusual spike to 100 Gbps in 2010, the largest recorded attack was 60 Gbps. This denotes a steady increase in the size of attacks, but Morales of Arbor Networks believes the numbers will eventually begin to plateau because most networks can be brought down with far smaller attacks, around 10 Gbps. Even if they stop growing, however, DDoS attacks won’t stop happening altogether, Morales said. Not even the change to IPv6 will stop the barrage of daily attacks, as some were already recorded in the report. Because of the steady nature of this attack strategy, experts suggest all companies that function online prepare themselves for this type of attack by doing away with the “it won’t happen to me” attitude. Luckily, recent “hacktivist” activities have given DDoS attacks enough press that CSOs and CEOs are starting to pay attention, but that’s just the first step, Morales said. It’s important to follow through with getting the protection your business needs if you want to achieve the goal, said VirtualRoad.org’s Lundström. “The goal is to keep doing the work,” he said. Source: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/2240159017/DDoS-mitigation-a-key-component-in-network-security

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Distributed Denial of Service `DDoS` mitigation a key component in network security

RBS & NatWest Web services knocked out; Oslo Bors hit by DDoS attack

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and its NatWest and Ulster Bank subsidiaries have been hit by “technical issues” that have left customers unable to access online services. In a statement, RBS says: “We are currently experiencing technical issues which mean that a number of customer account balances have not yet been updated and some of our online services are temporarily unavailable.” A similar message appears on the NatWest Web site, with the bank adding: “We are working hard to fix this issue as soon as possible and will keep you updated on progress. We are experiencing very high call volumes as a result.” In a later update, RBS has revealed that the issue “was caused by a failure of our systems to properly update customers’ balances overnight. The main problem customers are having is that where people have had money go into their accounts overnight, there may be a delay in it showing up on their balance.” The problems have been ongoing for several hours, with NatWest first acknowledging the issue on its Twitter feed at 08.43, eliciting responses from customers complaining that payments have not been processed and wages not paid. The ongoing crisis has forced the bank to take drastic measures, promising to keep over 1000 branches open until 19:00BST on Thursday to assist short-changed customers. Daoud Fakhri, a senior analyst at Datamonitor says the episode is emblematic of wider problems facing the banking sector as a whole. “Many providers, being early adopters of IT systems when the technology was still in its infancy, have been left saddled with inflexible core systems that are often several decades old, and that are increasingly unable to cope with the demands being placed on them,” he says. “The growing expectations of consumers around online and mobile banking means that the tensions between the provision of ever more sophisticated services and the capability of core systems to satisfy these demands are close to breaking point, and this increases the likelihood of episodes such as the NatWest mishap happening again. Separately, the Web site of Norwegian bourse Oslo Børs has been knocked off line, apparently by a DDoS attack . Spokesman Per Eikrem told local outlet NTB that the hit is only affecting the exchange’s site and not its trading, messaging or monitoring systems. Source: http://www.finextra.com/News/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23830

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RBS & NatWest Web services knocked out; Oslo Bors hit by DDoS attack

Financial Gain is Main Motivation for Cyber Criminals

Announcing the findings of “The Impact of Cybercrime on Businesses” survey, carried out by Ponemon Institute, Check Point Software Technologies revealed that 65% of the organizations which experienced targeted attacks reported that an attacker’s primary objective was to make a financial gain. Disrupting business operations and stealing customer data were attributed as the next likely motivation for attackers, as stated by 45 % of the surveyed organizations. The report also stated that only around 5% of security attacks were driven by political or ideological agendas. The report, which surveyed 2,618 C-level executives and IT security administrators in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Hong Kong and Brazil across organizations of various types and sizes, showed that companies reported an average of 66 new security attack attempts per week. Respondents in all countries stated that the most serious consequences of such attacks were disruption of business and loss of sensitive information, including intellectual property and trade secrets. Diminished reputation and impact on brand name were the least of their worries, with the exception of respondents in the UK. Successful attacks could end up costing businesses anywhere between $100,000 and $300,000: the participants estimated the average cost of such an attack at $214,000 USD. Tomer Teller, security evangelist and researcher at Check Point Software Technologies, was quoted in the press release as saying, “Cybercriminals are no longer isolated amateurs. They belong to well-structured organizations, often employing highly-skilled hackers to execute targeted attacks, many of whom receive significant amounts of money depending on the region and nature of the attack.” “For the most part, the goal of attackers is to obtain valuable information. These days, credit card data shares space on the shelves of virtual hacking stores with items such as employee records and Facebook or email log-ins, as well as zero-day exploits that can be stolen and sold on the black market ranging anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000,” he added. While Denial of Service (DoS) attacks were seen as the type of cyber crime that posed the greatest risk to organizations, SQL injections were cited, by 43% of the respondents, as the most serious types of attack organizations had experienced in the last two years, the report stated. Other threats cited in the survey included APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats), botnet Infections and DoS attacks cited by 35%, 33%, and 32% of the respondents respectively. On the threats posed by activities of their employees, organizations, across all the surveyed countries, unanimously cited the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs as the biggest concern, followed by the use of social networks and removable media devices such as USB sticks. Hong Kong and Brazil reported on an average the highest percentage of mobile devices infected through an act of cyber crime, at 25 percent and 23 percent, respectively. The U.S. and Germany had the lowest average of infected mobile devices and machines connected to the network at 11 percent and nine percent respectively. The report found that for protecting themselves from these threats, a majority of organizations have instituted Firewall and Intrusion Prevention solutions. However, at the same time, less than half of the surveyed organizations have implemented the necessary protections to fight botnets and APTs. “Cybercrime has become a business. With bot toolkits for hackers selling today for the mere price of $500, it gives people insight into how big the problem has become, and the importance of implementing preemptive protections to safeguard critical assets,” Teller stated. It was pointed out that only 64% of companies said that they have current training and awareness programs in place to prevent targeted attacks. “While the types of threats and level of concern companies have may vary across regions, the good news is that security awareness is rising,” Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute, was quoted as saying in the press release. “Across the board, C-level executives reported high levels of concern about targeted attacks and planned to implement security precautions, technology and training to mitigate the risk of targeted attacks.” For fast DDoS protection click here . Source: http://www.computerworld.in/news/check-point-survey-financial-gain-main-motivation-cyber-criminals-12922012

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Financial Gain is Main Motivation for Cyber Criminals

Check Point releases new DDoS Protector appliances

Check Point introduced a new line of security appliances designed to fight DDoS attacks. The DDoS Protector appliances deliver multi-layered protection and up to 12 Gbps of throughput to help business…

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Check Point releases new DDoS Protector appliances

Asia to see rise in cloud DDoS security biz

COMMUNICASIA, SINGAPORE–With the rise of cloud services adoption, businesses also have escalating security concerns over distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and that presents an opportunity for carrier service providers to offer cloud-based DDoS protection, which one industry executive adds is set to gain traction in Asia. Among enterprises, the constant discussion around cloud to make it “sexy and pervasive” to customers cannot ignore the question of what happens when the cloud service becomes unavailable due to an attack, said Lau Kok Khiang, director for Asia-Pacific IP division at Alcatel-Lucent. There is hence “strong pent-up demand” for cloud-based DDoS protection, for which carrier cloud services are in a good position to provide, he said. Lau was presenting at the Telco Rising Cloud conference in CommunicAsia here Tuesday. Large attacks have become commonplace, and enterprises are basically losing the arms race in the Internet security space, Lau described. Among the various DDoS attacks in 2011 alone that saw businesses worldwide suffer a “great amount of damage” involved Sony PlayStation Network, the Hong Kong stock exchange, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and WordPress, he pointed out. The executive emphasized that cloud-based DDoS security was a “win-win” scenario for both the service provider and enterprise customers. For the service provider, it is a new revenue opportunity, which also complements existing enterprise services such as virtual private network (VPN) and business broadband. Additionally, this could help drive customer stickiness, Lau said. That is because from the customers’ point of view, having cloud-based DDoS protection ensures 24-by-7 availability of the cloud services they use, which mean better safeguards for their enterprise assets such as confidential client data, he added. On the event sidelines, Lau told ZDNet Asia that cloud DDoS security is set to gain traction in Asia, due to increasing awareness of the risks and prevalence of DDoS. This will prompt companies to consider cloud DDoS protection as added security measures, in order to ensure their service availabilities meet customer demands as well as industry-specific regulations. Also, apart from commercial entities, governments in the region are also pushing the message that organizations need to protect themselves from becoming the next victim of an attack, he added, referring to the massive DDoS attacks that disrupted Internet services in Myanmar in November 2010. Another speaker at the conference, Anisha Travis, partner at law firm Webb Henderson, said while the cloud has benefits and opportunities for businesess, they should go into space with “their eyes open”. In other words, they need to understand and prepare for mitigate the major risks associated with cloud, one of which is service levels, she pointed out during her presentation. It is essential that service level agreements (SLAs) are well-drafted for specific service levels and must also include “practical remedies” when there is downtime or outage, Travis advised. Customers cannot rely solely on the service provider, and should do their due diligence in clarifying ownership, consequences, and failures, she added. Source: http://www.zdnetasia.com/communicasia/asia-to-see-rise-in-cloud-ddos-security-biz-62305165.htm

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Asia to see rise in cloud DDoS security biz

Breaking Down a DDoS Attack

Distributed Denial of Service attacks have one goal, to make their target unavailable to its users. And there are certainly a number of different ways these attacks can be carried out. Some of the more common DDoS techniques used by attackers include the use of malware to infect computers used to attack their target from a variety of different sources. One of the most well known examples of a Distributed Denial of Service attack is the infamous MyDoom worm that was sent by email spammers and infected the recipient’s computers. The malware targeted domains with a flood of traffic at a predetermined date and time to bring the site down as it could not handle the flood of incoming connections. More commonly, DDoS attack make use of botnets where computers are turned into zombies, after being infected with malware, and are controlled by a central computer. These botnets can then be used to launch the attack against a target of the attacker’s choosing. The numbers inside and attack But just what does it take to launch a successful DDoS attack? How many computers does an attacker use? How much bandwidth to they need to consume? What is the number of connections it takes to successfully bring a web application down? A recent attack gives us a look into these numbers. While it was not the largest DDoS attack ever launched against a website or web application, a recent week long attack against an Asian e-commerce company in early November was the largest attack in 2011. So just what does it take to bring down an e-commerce platform? Let’s take a look: 250,000 zombie computers coming from a variety of botnets. This is an estimated number based on similar attacks in the past and on the amount of traffic and connections that were used to disable the e-commerce platform that was targeted. The number of computers used in previous attacks were easier to estimate as often times, one large botnet was used in the attack. However since large botnets like Rustock and Cutwail were taken down cybercriminals have gotten wise to larger botnets attracting too much attention so the trend it to use smaller botnets, under 50,000 infected computers, and combining them to launch large scale attacks. 45 Gigabytes per second. At its peak, this DDoS attack flooded the company’s site with up to 45 Gbps. To accomplish this, the botnets’ zombie computers sent an average of 69 million packets per second. While this number is rather disturbing for a network engineer, it isn’t the worst consumption of bandwidth ever used in a DDoS attack. In 2010 the 100 Gbps threshold was broken. If this doesn’t seem overly threatening, consider the fact that 100 Gbps used in a DDoS attack shows an 102% increase of bandwidth consumed by these threats over the course of one year and a 1000% increase in bandwidth use since 2005. Yet while the bandwidth consumed in the largest attack of 2011 is significantly lower than that of the previous year’s attack it doesn’t mean that the scope of the problem is decreasing. In fact, the 2011 attack was much more complex as six different attack signatures were used to attack Layer 3, the network layer, and the application Layer, 7. The sophistication of this dual layered attack required less bandwidth to do just as much damage. 15,000 connections per second. 15,000 connections equals that many people trying to connect to a web site, or web application. Not even the most naive, or aggressive, company would think that they had that many people trying to connect to their e-commerce platform every second. This equals 1,296,000,000 connections in a 24 hour period. That much activity can bring some pretty impressive devices to their knees. So far, the name of the company has not been released due to confidentiality agreements. The reason for the attack also remains unclear. Insiders do believe, however, that the attack was launched by a disgruntled user or a competitor looking to gain an edge in the marketplace using industrial sabotage. Regardless of the reason it is clear that the scale and sophistication of DDoS threats continues to grow. In cases like these above it’s always best to have the best DDoS protection .

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Breaking Down a DDoS Attack

“Armenpress” prevented Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ hacker attack

DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attack took place in order to thwart the works of “Armenpress” Armenian news agency website, which was prevented by IT specialists of the agency. Earlier Armenpress web site has been attacked. The agency learnt about the hacker attack on June 13 night and informed the enforcement bodies. Armenpress staff continues its work: the agency’s customers receive the news with its full volume. Thanks to the efforts of Armenpress IT specialists the security of agency has been intensified: currently works are carried out to determine the reasons of hacker attack. “Armenpress” expresses gratitude to its colleagues for the support and condemns any kind of hacker attack, qualifying it as a crime in all respects. Source: http://armenpress.am/eng/news/684393/%E2%80%9Carmenpress%E2%80%9D-prevented-ddos-hacker-attack.html

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“Armenpress” prevented Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ hacker attack

Indian ISPs targeted in Anonymous censorship protest

The websites of Indian government-run communications company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam and the Internet Service Providers Association of India faced DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks from Anonymous on Wednesday as some Internet service providers continue to block file-sharing websites following a court order. ISPs are only following the orders of the court which are supreme, said Rajesh Chharia, president of ISPAI, who was doubtful that the association’s website had been affected by the hackers. The Indian arm of Anonymous previously attacked some government websites, and those of some political parties. Last month, users reported that the hackers tinkered with the service of a large ISP, Reliance Communications, redirecting its users from sites like Facebook and Twitter to a protest page. The hackers also claimed to have attacked the website and servers of Reliance, and got access to a large list of URLs blocked by the company. Reliance denied its servers were hacked. The attacks follow a March court order directing ISPs to prevent a newly released local movie from being available online in pirated versions. Some ISPs blocked some file-sharing sites altogether, rather than any offending URLs. The measures taken by the ISPs have differed depending on their interpretation of the order, Chharia said. Some websites such as The Pirate Bay continue to be blocked by some ISPs and carried the message, “This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications.” Pastebin is also not accessible through some ISPs. Internet service providers are against censorship, and also against piracy, Chharia said. “It is up to the government and various groups to come to a resolution,” he added. The responsibility of intermediaries has been a controversial issue in India, with some Internet companies including Google and Facebook sued in court late last year for objectionable content found on their sites. Their websites have been attacked as blocks on some file-sharing sites continue Anonymous meanwhile plans on June 9 what it describes as non-violent protests across many cities in India against censorship of the Internet in the country. It claims to have already received police permission for some of the protests. The scope of the protests has widened to include demands for changes in the India’s Information Technology Act, which among other things allows the government to block websites under certain conditions, and also allows the removal of online content by notice to ISPs. The government is also in the process of framing rules that will put curbs on freedom on social media, according to the hacker group. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227804/Indian_ISPs_targeted_in_Anonymous_censorship_protest

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Indian ISPs targeted in Anonymous censorship protest

WHMCS under renewed DDoS blitz after patching systems

‘Undesirable people’ are all over us WHMCS, the UK-based billing and customer support tech supplier, has once again come under denial of service attacks, on this occasion following an upgrade of its systems to defend against a SQL injection vulnerability.…

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WHMCS under renewed DDoS blitz after patching systems

Check Point Survey Reveals More Than Half of Targeted Attacks Reported Were Driven by Financial Fraud

Denial of Service Attacks and Botnets Pose Increased Risk to Organizations, With Successful Attacks Costing Businesses Over $100,000 per Incident REDWOOD CITY, CA, May 22, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Check Point(R) Software Technologies Ltd. CHKP +0.04% , the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, today announced the results of a new survey revealing 65 percent of organizations who experienced targeted attacks report the hacker’s motivation was driven by financial fraud, and resulted in business disruption and the loss of sensitive information, including intellectual property and trade secrets. The report, The Impact of Cybercrime on Businesses, also showed companies reporting an average of 66 new security attack attempts per week, with successful incidents costing businesses anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000. Among the list of top threats, Denial of Service (DoS) attacks were said to pose the greatest risk to organizations. Cybercriminals today are increasingly leveraging malware, bots and other forms of sophisticated threats to attack organizations for various reasons — from financial gain and disruption of business operations to data theft or attacks driven by political agendas. Regardless of motivation, new variants of malware are being generated on a daily basis, often targeting multiple sites and organizations to increase the likelihood of an attack’s initial success and the potential for threats to spread quietly throughout an organization. “Cybercriminals are no longer isolated amateurs. They belong to well-structured organizations, often employing highly-skilled hackers to execute targeted attacks, many of whom receive significant amounts of money depending on the region and nature of the attack,” said Tomer Teller, security evangelist and researcher at Check Point Software Technologies. “Cybercrime has become a business. With bot toolkits for hackers selling today for the mere price of $500, it gives people insight into how big the problem has become, and the importance of implementing preemptive protections to safeguard critical assets.” According to the survey, SQL injections were cited as the most serious types of attacks organizations had experienced in the last two years, and more than one third of respondents had each experienced APTs, botnet infections and DoS attacks. Following investigations of targeted threats, respondents reported the biggest consequences were a disruption to their business and the loss of sensitive data and intellectual property. “For the most part, the goal of attackers is to obtain valuable information. These days, credit card data shares space on the shelves of virtual hacking stores with items such as employee records and Facebook or email log-ins, as well as zero-day exploits that can be stolen and sold on the black market ranging anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000,” added Teller. “Unfortunately, the rate of cybercrime seems to be climbing as businesses experience a surge in Web 2.0 use and mobile computing in corporate environments — giving hackers more channels of communication and vulnerable entry points into the network.” “Companies are constantly facing new and costly security risks from both internal and external sources that can jeopardize the business,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder, Ponemon Institute. “While the types of threats and level of concern companies have may vary across regions, the good news is that security awareness is rising. Across the board, C-level executives reported high levels of concern about targeted attacks and planned to implement security precautions, technology and training to mitigate the risk of targeted attacks.” Key Findings from the Report: –  Primary Motivations of Targeted Threats – Following investigations of cyber-attacks within organizations surveyed, the majority of respondents reported financial fraud (65%) as the cybercriminal’s primary motivation, followed by intent to disrupt business operations (45%) and stealing customer data (45%). Approximately 5% of security attacks were estimated to have been driven by political or ideological agendas. –  Cybercrime comes in all shapes and forms – On average, respondents reported SQL Injections as the most serious security attacks experienced in the last two years, and more than one third of respondents said they experienced APTs (35%), botnet Infections (33%) and DoS attacks (32%). –  Targeted attacks continue to be costly – Survey participants estimated a single, successful targeted attack costing an average of $214,000 USD. In Germany, respondents reported a higher average estimate of $300,000 per incident, and Brazil with a lower average of $100,000 per incident. Estimates include variables such as forensic investigation, investments in technology and brand recovery costs. –  Most Common Threat Vectors – When asked to rank employee activities that pose the greatest risk, all regions unanimously cited the use of mobile devices — including smartphones and tablet PCs — as the biggest concern, followed by social networks and removable media devices such as USB sticks. –  Current technology investments – While the majority of companies have important security building blocks in place, such as Firewall and Intrusion Prevention solutions, less than half of companies surveyed have advanced protections to fight botnets and APTs. However, the majority of organizations in Germany and the US are beginning to deploy solutions more specific to addressing cyber-risk such as anti-bot, application control and threat intelligence systems. –  Security Training and Awareness – Only 64% of companies say they have current training and awareness programs in place to prevent targeted attacks. Cybercriminals are focused on valuable data that is worth the time and risk; therefore, it has become imperative for enterprises to focus their security efforts there as well. Businesses should start by identifying critical data and assets and enforce multi-layered threat prevention. While thousands of companies have already been targets of bots and advanced threats, businesses have the responsibility to stop it from spreading. For more information about how Check Point helps customers mitigate the risk of cybercrime, visit: http://www.checkpoint.com/campaigns/r75.40/index.html . The report, The Impact of Cybercrime on Businesses, surveyed 2,618 C-level executives and IT security administrators in the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Hong Kong and Brazil. The survey sample represents organizations of all sizes and across multiple industries, including financial, industrial, defense, retail, healthcare and education. For more information and to view the full report, visit: http://www.checkpoint.com/products/downloads/whitepapers/ponemon-cybercrime-2012.pdf . About Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. ( www.checkpoint.com ), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, provides customers with uncompromised protection against all types of threats, reduces security complexity and lowers total cost of ownership. Check Point first pioneered the industry with FireWall-1 and its patented stateful inspection technology. Today, Check Point continues to develop new innovations based on the Software Blade Architecture, providing customers with flexible and simple solutions that can be fully customized to meet the exact security needs of any organization. Check Point is the only vendor to go beyond technology and define security as a business process. Check Point 3D Security uniquely combines policy, people and enforcement for greater protection of information assets and helps organizations implement a blueprint for security that aligns with business needs. Customers include tens of thousands of organizations of all sizes, including all Fortune and Global 100 companies. Check Point’s award-winning ZoneAlarm solutions protect millions of consumers from hackers, spyware and identity theft. SOURCE: Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. mailto:press@us.checkpoint.com mailto:ir@us.checkpoint.com http://www.marketwatch.com/story/check-point-survey-reveals-more-than-half-of-targeted-attacks-reported-were-driven-by-financial-fraud-2012-05-22

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Check Point Survey Reveals More Than Half of Targeted Attacks Reported Were Driven by Financial Fraud