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The Cost of Hack Attacks
Consumer data broker ChoicePoint, Inc. had to pay $10 million in civil penalties and$5 million in consumer redress to settle Federal Trade Commission charges after itacknowledged that the personal financial records of more than 163,000 consumers inits database had been compromised in 2005.
ZDNET recently reported that more than 4,000 UK MasterCard holders may have beenaffected by a security breach that occurred after hackers gained access to creditcard details through a UK-based online retailer. Thousands of cards had to becancelled and re-issued as a result, as well as MasterCard issuers having to call upall customers whose details had been compromised.
Similarly, last month, a San Diego man was charged with hacking into USC admissionsWeb site and accessing more than 270,000 applications containing sensitiveinformation such as birth dates, addresses and Social Security numbers. USC spentmore than $140,000 to notify affected students and also shut down the applicationsWeb site for 10 days. The hack was made via a SQL injection attack.
Attacks on the Increase
Galea revealed worrying statistics:  In a paper presented at the JavaOne conferencelast year, Cisco security architect Martin Nystrom claimed that as many as 95% ofweb applications have serious flaws, 80% of which are being vulnerable to cross-sitescripting attacks , reported Galea. Attacked sites include the famous open-sourcerepository Sourceforge.net and the popular MySpace.com social network.
Acunetix provides free audit to help companies determine risk level of their website
Enterprises would like to have their website security checked can register for afree audit by visiting www.acunetix.com/security-audi t. Participating enterpriseswill receive a summary audit report showing whether their website is secure or not.Summary reports will be delivered within five business days of submission.
About Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner
Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner ensures website security by automaticallychecking for SQL injection, Cross site scripting and other vulnerabilities. Itchecks password strength on authentication pages and automatically audits shoppingcarts, forms, dynamic content and other web applications. As the scan is beingcompleted, the software produces detailed reports that pinpoint wherevulnerabilities exist.
About Acunetix
Acunetix was founded to combat the alarming rise in web attacks. Its flagshipproduct, Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner, is the result of several years ofdevelopment by a team of highly experienced security developers. Acunetix is aprivately held company with headquarters based in Europe (Malta), a US office inSeattle, Washington and an office in London, UK. For more information about Acunetixvisit: http://www.acunetix.com.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
