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Innovation

This is what cybercrime looks like

If you ever needed a reason to change your password right now, here it is.
Written by Kirsten Korosec, Contributor

That 123456 password simply doesn't cut it. Personal and business accounts are constantly under attack. That's what cyber security firms--and SmartPlanet--keeps saying, at least. And yet, folks continue to use the same bad, hackable passwords to protect their accounts.

U.S. computer security company Norse, which specializes in live dark intelligence and monitors malware and spyware, has a real-time map that shows just how pervasive cyber attacks are. The animated map show hacks in real time. But keep in mind that this shows just a sliver of the number of attacks happening at any one time.

The attacks shown are the map are just a portion of live flows against Norse's "honeypot" infrastructure, a network designed to detect attacks and provide a snapshot of what's happening globally.

The first screenshot was taken about five minutes after opening the live map.

cybercrime.jpg

This next shot was taken an hour later. You can see the concentration of attacks in the U.S., China and Europe.

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China and the U.S. are the most active. By the first hour of opening the map, China had attacked the U.S. more than 3,500 times.

cybersecurity-china.jpg

But China isn't the only one attacking. Here's a screenshot of attacks originating from the U.S. around the same time as the China attacks screenshot was taken. the U.S. originated attacks nearly mirrored China's.

cybersecurity-usa.jpg

Photo: Screenshot of Norse animated map


This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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