Cybercrime: 7 Interesting Facts You Should Know

What do you really know about Cybersecurity and Cybercrime? Russian hackers are the most common ones, right? No, not always. Additionally, malware does more than just take data.

A Cybercriminals’ state would have a gross domestic product that was third in the world, only behind the US and China. The analysis by the US business Cybersecurity Ventures comes to this result. Also, it forecasts that by the year 2025, the cost of cybercrime will surpass $10 trillion.  Keep on reading to learn other interesting and current facts about cybercrime.

Here are 7 Interesting Facts about Cybercrime

1. What are the most common cyberattacks?

The IT and telecommunications corporation Verizon’s Cybersecurity Report 2022 states that 40% of all cyberattacks worldwide involve data theft, in which hackers utilize, for example, stolen identities and passwords. The latter, in turn, was obtained through phishing or social engineering.

Ransomware assaults, in which thieves encrypt crucial data of unwary customers and only send the password after being paid ransomware, are just behind incidences of data theft in the Verizon numbers. Data theft on the Internet was cited as the biggest security issue by 77 percent of respondents to the Deloitte Security Report 2021.

2. What damage does cyberattack cause?

According to estimates from the insurance company Hiscox, a cyber-attack cost a company an average of $17,000 in 2021. Yet, depending on the nation, the damage varies substantially.

Business owners paid an average of $9,900 in Belgium and $28,100 in the UK. Additionally, US businesses experienced above-average damage, at $20,792 per occurrence. Cybercrime can be quite lucrative if you ask me.

Several factors in addition to the mere financial impact are important. In the same Hiscox poll, for instance, 27% of businesses claimed that cyberattacks had harmed their reputations. Also, 22% lamented the loss of clients and the difficulties in gaining new ones following such an incident.

3. Who is behind cyberattacks?

65 percent of cyberattacks on businesses are the work of criminals or groups with financial motivations. The Verizon Cybersecurity Report 2022 comes to a conclusion with this. Espionage comes in at number two with 31 percent.

Particularly active are nations like Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia, all of which are seeking to acquire sensitive data from Western organizations and businesses. Also prominent is the desire to hurt other nations.

Financial incentive is also at the forefront of hackers around the world, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office’s report Federal Situation Picture Cybercrime 2020.

4. What are the most common vulnerabilities?

Security flaws in applications have been flagged by cybersecurity professionals for years. The Consortium for Information and Software Quality estimates that US businesses alone lost over $2 billion in 2020 as a result of flawed software.

So, it is not surprising that desktop sharing applications served as a gateway in 40% of ransomware occurrences, according to Verizon’s Cybersecurity Report.

What is surprising, though, is that in 35% of cases, Trojan horses were used by infected emails with harmful URLs. This demonstrates how seriously phishing is taken as a security risk. It’s definitely one of the most prominent cybercrimes.

Check this out if you need help with technology solutions, for instance IT security, data analysis, data integration, cloud computing etc.

5. Which attacks have increased the most since the Coronavirus pandemic?

Numerous people have been working from home since the Coronavirus epidemic began in early 2020. The pattern will likely persist even when the emergency is over, according to several professionals.

This reality is advantageous to cybercriminals as well as the environment and leisure, as more and more employees connect corporate networks using weak remote applications.

According to a report conducted by the research institute Ponemon Institute, social engineering has become more prevalent after 2020, according to 62% of the companies polled. In this kind of phishing attack, hackers scan social media profiles of their targets for personal information while posing as friends or former coworkers to obtain vital information.

6. From which countries are most phishing attacks carried out?

You’re mistaken if you think China or Russia are the countries with the majority of phishing websites. In terms of the quantity of online fraud instances, Russia is only ranked second, according to several 2021 Cybersecurity Reports.

The US is the country where cybercriminals are most common, followed by the British Virgin Islands in the third spot. Germany comes in at number four, hosting 2.5% of all harmful websites.

DDOS attacks present a unique set of challenges. According to the Cloudflare 2021 study, China is ranked first in this category. Yet surprisingly, the United States and Brazil are in second and third place, respectively, and Russia is only in sixth.

7. How many phishing websites are there worldwide?

The exact number of spoofed and malicious websites is unknown. In 2020, however, many major cybersecurity companies reported there were over 6.9 million phishing sites.

According to the calculations, 19,000 new ones were added every day. Since a total of around 252,000 websites are created every day, around every 13th new website (7.5 percent) is a phishing site.

Conclusion

Since the commencement of the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, cybercrime has grown. Attacks involving ransomware are also on the rise, in addition to data theft. The majority of those who paid the ransom did not receive all of their data back. The Federal Agency for Information Security also opposes accepting financial claims for this reason.

Financial considerations continue to be the hackers’ primary driving force. In order to collect personal consumer information, hacks frequently target corporate servers.

Also, they frequently employ concurrent DDoS attacks of increasing power to take down servers. It is crucial that businesses invest in IT security because of this. Private users should also protect their equipment by doing regular backups and installing strong firewalls and anti-virus software. Cybercrime is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Watch this space for updates in the Facts category on Interesting Facts.

Like what you just read? Buy us a coffee to enable us to bring you more content like this.

You're also more than welcome to subscribe to our newsletter to stay in the loop.

Feel free to explore our website or check out our Featured Articles.