Irish site sees hacker traffic

An Irish website set up by Deloitte & Touche, Espion and Data Electronics to test the frequency of attacks by hackers, has seen 334 attempts to breech its security in the space of one month.

The site, known as the Honeynet but not disclosed for testing purposes, went live in April and has had mainly hackers from the US, China and Korea try to attack it. Other attacks have originated from Germany and Italy.

Colman Morrissey, managing director of security software company Espion, said, "We are now in a position to begin to identify trends and patterns in the kinds of attacks we are seeing and the timing of those attacks.

"For example, nearly a fifth of all attacks came on a Friday. The longer the Honeynet is in operation, the more we will understand, and the more we understand easier it is to help Irish organisations protect themselves and their information assets from attack."