INTERNET SECURITY
Cybercrime grows to scale of drug trafficking
By Jon Swartz
USA Today
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SAN FRANCISCO — There appears to be no end to the cybercrime wave amid daily headlines about the latest computer breach and despite the best efforts of hundreds of security companies.
The latest estimate: $200 billion a year, rivaling the illicit markets in drug trafficking and money laundering, says Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at computer-security firm F-Secure.
Hypponen was among scores of computer-security experts here this week to discuss how data theft and Internet-enabled financial fraud have evolved into a global enterprise as sophisticated and responsive to economic principles as any other industry.
"International crime 10 years ago was drugs and money laundering," says Hypponen. Yet Interpol, the international crime-fighting organization, has only a 65 million euro annual budget (about $102 million in U.S. dollars) to fight crime, he says.
The onslaught has had a wide-ranging impact, based on the topics of panels, reports and surveys released at the conference:
Nearly 60 percent of Americans are fearful someone will steal their account passwords when they bank online, and 38 percent do not trust making payments online, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by TNS Sofres for digital-security company Gemalto.
Several analysts, including John Pescatore of Gartner, point to the escalating threat of sprawling networks of compromised PCs controlled by criminal groups. These bot nets are increasingly spreading at financial institutions. The top bot nets send a staggering 100 billion spam e-mail messages each day, SecureWorks says.
In one YouTube post, a group from Albania offers to illegally break into corporate networks to steal data and implant malware, says Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence at SecureWorks.
