Even when attacks are not newsworthy enough to be reported
on TV or talked about in security industry circles, they still negatively affect companies??™
bottom lines all the time. Companies can lose annual revenue and experience increased
costs and expenses due to network downtime, which translates into millions of dollars
lost in productivity and revenue.
Here are a few more examples and trends of the security compromises that are taking
place today:
??? Both Ameritrade and E-Trade Financial, two of the top five online brokerage
services, confirmed that millions of dollars had been lost to (or stolen by)
hacker attacks on their systems in the third quarter of 2006. Investigations by
the SEC, FBI, and Secret Service have been initiated as a result.
??? Apple computers, which had been relatively untargeted by hackers due to their
smaller market share, are becoming the focus of more attacks. Identified
vulnerabilities in the MAC OS X increased by almost 400 percent from 2004 to
2006, but still make up only a small percentage of the total of known
vulnerabilities. In another product line, Apple reported that some of their iPods
shipped in late 2006 were infected with the RavMonE.exe virus. The virus was
Gray Hat Hacking: The Ethical Hacker??™s Handbook
6
Business Application Estimated Outage Cost per Minute
Supply chain management $11,000
E-commerce $10,000
Customer service $3,700
ATM/POS/EFT $3,500
Financial management $1,500
Human capital management $1,000
Messaging $1,000
Infrastructure $700
Table 1-1
Downtime Losses
(Source: Alinean)
Chapter 1: Ethics of Ethical Hacking
7
PART I
thought to have been introduced into the production line through another
company that builds the iPods for Apple.
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