It's official: $1 trillion cybercrime revenues exceed drug trafficking
Printer friendly
"Our latest research suggests that, whilst the economic downturn is reducing the income of drug traffickers, cybercriminals are becoming ever more innovative in the ways they extract money from companies and individual," said Yuval Ben Itzhak, Finjan's Chief Technology Officer.
"In our Q1 2009 report on cybercrime, for example, we revealed that one single rogueware network are raking in $10,800 a day, or $39.42 million a year. If you extrapolate those figures across the many thousands of cybercrime operations that exist on the Internet at any given time, the results easily reach a trillion dollars," he added.
According to Ben-Itzhak, Finjan's Q1 2009 security trends report also revealed that traffic volume to compromised Web sites has increased significantly, so luring masses of potential buyers to rogueware offerings.
As we have reported many times in our quarterly reports, he said, cybercriminals keep on looking for improved methods to distribute their malware and rogueware.
And since they make money by trading stolen data or selling rogue software, they are always looking for new and innovative techniques all time, he explained.
"It's against this backdrop that we can confirm AT&T CSO Amoroso's testimony that cyber-security threats have increased significantly over the past five years, and have reached the point where they pose a significant threat to all organisations," he said.
'We have seen a trend of unemployed IT personnel finding new and easy income by purchasing and using Crimeware Toolkits that are sold by professional hackers. We believe that this was just the beginning of a wider trend that we will experience in 2009 and 2010. Having the large number of layoffs of IT professionals all around the world, especially in the USA, we expect a rising number of people willing to ‘give it a try' and to get stolen credit card numbers, online banking accounts and corporate data that they can use to generate income,' he added
"Because of this, we are urging companies to constantly review their IT security defences and the ways they monitor their IT resources against all forms of incursion and data leakages. It's only with extreme vigilance that IT managers can reduce the risk of a serious cybercrime event causing severe fiscal damage to their firm," he added.
- Login or Register to comment
- Add to a social bookmarking site
Editor's Manifesto: Tales of the entirely expected
"Several weeks into the new era of Coaltiion Government and certain key themes are emerging. First up, it's clear that the battle of the 'who can get their memoirs out the door quick enough to steal a march in the revisionist history stakes' has been triumphantly won by M'Lord Mandelson (Weren't those TV ads scary – the velvet smoking jacket, the leather fireside chair, all that Brillcream! The only thing missing was the theme tune to Tales of the Unexpected and the accompanying prancing sillouette of Harriet Harman or Diane Abbott dancing!)” Read more
The Dispatch Box: Data quality and the public sector
Colin Rickard, managing director EMEA at SAS subsidiary Dataflux, argues public sector data must be of high quality if the efficiencies promised with ICT and infrastructure is to be realised.
"Tackling the public sector’s data integration and data quality challenges is a tough prospect. The challenge may require more effort than a comparative project in a large private company. Data must be governed according to a strategy that necessitates bringing interested parties together.” Read more
Innovation: A step too far in the austerity age?
Complete and enter our draw to win a free seat at the e-Government Awards. The public sector is already perceived to be lacking in innovation, but is that a fair assessment, and what role could it play in helping the government meet efficiency targets? What do people working on the frontline of ICT in public sector organisations think? Take part and share your views
James Gardner, CTO at the Department for Work and Pensions discusses his thoughts on innovation in the public and commercial sectors.
Source: K2 Advisory