Hackers Take Aim at Small Businesses

Cyberthieves find them to be tempting targets: Wall Street Journal
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 21, 2011 2:12 PM CDT
Cyberattacks: Hackers Take Aim at Small Businesses
Hackers are switching their focus to small businesses.   (Shutterstock)

It’s not just Sony and Citigroup that face a hacking threat: Small businesses are becoming an increasingly popular target, reports the Wall Street Journal. Of 761 data breaches investigated in 2010, 63% were against firms with 100 or fewer workers. Some 95% of the credit card breaches Visa has discovered have been hits on small businesses, and “it's going to get much worse before it gets better,” says an FBI agent.

Small businesses make tempting targets, a former hacker tells the Journal: It’s easy to attack dozens within the time it would take to hack a big firm, and they typically have weak security. "Who would want to break into us?” asked a magazine store owner near Chicago whose computers were hijacked with a software program that intercepted credit card numbers. He ended up losing about $22,000. (More hacking stories.)

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