OWASP EU Summit 2008 Media Coverage/CM English Version English Version

Virus without an effective medicine yet

Cyber crimes against internet banking and e-commerce sites which have access to credit card numbers are increasing. Criminal networks are able to access your computer, turn it into a zombie and use it as a bridge defraud other consumers. In Portugal, according to the Judiciary Police, more than 2 million Euros were robbed through cyber crime last year. Project Nonius, supported by researchers from University of Coimbra Science & Technology College, concluded that we are facing serious risks because of Internet usage within Portugal.

Aiming to find solutions to the computer vulnerabilities, a summit with IT Security specialists from several countries was concluded yesterday at Albufeira. Dinis Cruz, board member of OWASP - Open Web Application Security Project - said to Correio da Manhã that ‘the tools discussed during this meeting were created to defend computers against these threats and are available to anyone from the OWASP web site”

However, according to Carlos Serrão, professor at the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, the fight against cybercrime “requires a permanent update on how to deal with the vulnerabilities”.