ATLANTA — Hack attacks on credit unions are up 62% from last year, according to SecureWorks, a provider of managed information security services to 1,800 credit unions, banks and other financial institutions.

Attacks on client banks were up 81% during the same period, from June-December 2006 compared with January-June of this year, the Atlanta-based company says.

SecureWorks is now blocking 1,799 hackers per month per credit union and 1,462 on banks, says Allen Wilson, SecureWorks' vice president of research.

Stolen financial data potentially worth millions of dollars has been found sitting on databases, lifted by Trojan attacks launched by hackers from Eastern Europe and increasingly, China, the company says.

“These countries have large numbers of talented young people who are extremely computer literate,” Wilson says. “Challenging socioeconomic conditions, combined with a lack of computer crime legislation, make the allure of committing low-risk, fraud-related crimes against victims on the other side of the world an appealing choice.”

SecureWorks blocked 167 million separate hack attacks in the past 30 days, the company says.

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