When it comes to launching online attacks, criminals are getting more organized and branching out from the Windows operating system, eBay"s security chief said Tuesday. eBay recently did an in-depth analysis of its threat situation, and while the company is not releasing the results of this analysis, it did uncover a huge number of hacked, botnet computers, said Dave Cullinane, eBay"s chief information and security officer, speaking at a Microsoft-sponsored security symposium at Santa Clara University.
Cullinane, who one year ago downplayed the role of organized crime in phishing ("It"s not the Sopranos," he said), believes that online attackers are indeed becoming more sophisticated with malware developers now being funded to develop new and improved attacks. In the past year, Cullinane has seen better organization by eBay fraudsters. Criminals are being paid to develop better types of attacks, and the attacks are getting harder to detect, he added. "The phishing e-mails I see are extremely sophisticated," he said.