Cybercrime payoff greater than drug dealing

Crime, or at least cybercrime, pays. Business is so good, in fact, that even in the midst of an economic downturn, cybercrime is growing. The FBI reports that, for the first time ever, revenues from cybercrime have exceeded drug trafficking as the most lucrative illegal global business. It is estimated that the cyber crooks are reaping more than $1 trillion annually in illegal profits

"What we've seen is really a deep stratification of electronic crime into a growing, prosperous and responsive economy, with a number of specialty organizations, syndication and deepening organization of peers, both within a vertical skill set and across the entire enterprise of electronic crime," said Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to counteracting cybercrime. "Increasingly, we see this is turning into big business."

Cassidy said cyber criminals come from all over the world, with large concentrations in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as parts of Africa. In recent years, China has also emerged as a global security threat. A recent McAfee report found that of 265 countries surveyed, Hong Kong was the biggest security risk, with almost 19 percent of websites with the .hk domain hosting malware. It was followed by the .cn domain out of the People's Republic of China, and then by the Philippines, Romania and Russia.

For more on the payoff of cybercrime:
- check out this CRN.com article

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