A cybercrime index, published in the journal PLOS ONEshows that a relatively small number of countries are home to the greatest cybercrime threat.
According to the list, Russia is in first place, followed by Ukraine, China, USA, Nigeria and Romania.
Co-author of the study, Dr. Miranda Bruce from the University of Oxford and UNSW Canberra said the study would allow the public and private sectors to focus their resources on key cybercrime hubs and spend less time and funds on cybercrime countermeasures in countries where problem is not that important.
Because this matters
The research underpinning the Index attempts to help lift the veil of anonymity around cybercriminals and will hopefully help combat the growing threat of profit-driven cybercrime.
Zoom in
The data was collected through a survey of 92 leading cybercrime experts from around the world involved in intelligence gathering and cybercrime investigations.
The survey asked experts to examine five major categories of cybercrimethey identify the countries they consider to be the most important sources of each of these types of cybercrime, and then rank each country according to the impact, professionalism and technical skills of cybercriminals.
The five major categories of cybercrime assessed by the study were:
- Technical products/services (eg malware coding, botnet access, compromised systems access, tool production).
- Attacks and extortion (eg denial of service attacks, ransomware).
- Data/identity theft (eg hacking, phishing, account breaches, includes credit card).
- Fraud (eg, advance fee fraud, corporate email compromise, online auction fraud).
- Cashing / money laundering (eg credit card fraud, money laundering, illegal virtual currency platforms).
What they say
- Co-author Associate Professor Jonathan Lusthausfrom the University of Oxford’s Department of Sociology and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, said cybercrime is largely an invisible phenomenon because perpetrators often hide behind fake profiles and technical protections.
‘Due to the illegal and anonymous nature of their activities, cyber criminals cannot have easy access or reliable investigation. They are actively hiding. If you try to use technical data to map their location, you will also fail as cybercriminals bounce their attacks around internet infrastructure around the world. The best means of drawing a picture of where these offenders actually are is to survey those whose job it is to track these people.โ said Dr Lusthaus.
- Co-author of the study, Professor Federico Varese from Sciences Po in France, said the Global Cybercrime Index is the first step in a broader goal of understanding the local dimensions of cybercrime production around the world.
‘We hope to extend the study so that we can determine whether national characteristics such as educational attainment, internet penetration, GDP or corruption levels are associated with cybercrime. Many people believe that cybercrime is global and fluid, but this study supports the view that, like forms of organized crime, it is embedded in specific contextsโ, said Professor Varese.
Cybercrime country ranking
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