Lost 13.2 Billion

▽People are the bigger problem than system=The legendary hacker Kevin Mitnik testified at the American assembly, “I didn’t need to hack with professional computer techniques.” He was able to intrude systems by just ‘manipulating’ people.

A survey institution ‘the Penta-Safe Security Technology’ surveyed the ‘security mind’ of the British people recently. When they asked people passing by the Victoria Station by giving pens to write down their ID`s and passwords, two thirds of the respondents gave them out without hesitation.

And according to another survey, more than half of the office workers in the UK were using their names as passwords. They wrote down ID`s, passwords, and account numbers and put them on the monitors, or they often put their notebook computers that contained much information just about anywhere.

The Economist advised, “We can save a lot of security expenses by doing simple things like logging out during the lunch break and making serious passwords.”

▽The next generation security technology also has many blind points=The bio-recognition system that appears in SF movies is not very good, either.

According to a result of the study by the Security Research Center of the Yokohama National University, they could pass 80% of fingerprint readers using a fake finger made with gelatin.

The face recognition that confirmed a person with digital instant pictures was examined to be used at airport checkpoints after the 9.11 terror, but it was found out useless. The ratio that the face recognition system figured out a person correctly was just 51% and if a person changed hairstyle a bit, it could not recognized that person.

▽A world that everything is connected=Until few years ago, virus affected only one computer that was infected. However, the Surcam Virus, which appeared last July, reproduced itself and automatically sent to all the email addresses that were stored in that computer.

The Code Red Virus appeared same month infected 300,000 computers in only a week. The worldwide loss due to viruses last year, which was estimated by a consulting company, the Computer Economics, was as much as 13.2 billion dollars.

Since programs that connect computers directly such as instant messengers and P2P systems are being developed, the danger as well as convenience is growing.

The spreading of wireless Internet is making the digital world even weaker. Because there are chances that information can be intercepted in the air. According to a survey by the Computer World, 30% of the American businesses have wireless networks.

Seung-Jin Kim sarafina@donga.com