An international team of researchers have compiled the first ever ‘World Cybercrime Index’, which identifies key crime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime across the globe.
The research, today, shows that a relatively small number of countries house the greatest cybercriminal threat. Russia tops the Index, followed by Ukraine, China, the USA, Nigeria, and Romania. Australia comes in at number 34.
The data that underpins the Index was gathered through a survey of 92 leading cybercrime experts from around the world who are involved in cybercrime intelligence gathering and investigations.
Co-author of the study and cybersecurity expert Professor Nigel Phair, from Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology, said the survey asked the experts to consider different categories of cybercrime, nominate the countries that they consider to be the most significant sources of each type of cybercrime, and then rank each country according to the impact, professionalism, and technical skill of its cybercriminals.
“Through the information gathered from the diverse group of cybersecurity experts the study was able to construct a comprehensive index ranking all 197 UN-recognised countries against five distinct categories of cybercrime,” Professor Phair said.
“We are hoping this Index will provide policymakers with reliable indicators of the origins of cybercrime and will help to build cybersecurity capabilities appropriately.”
Study author, Dr Miranda Bruce from UNSW Canberra and the University of Oxford said the study will enable 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 the problem is not as significant.
“The research that underpins the Index will help remove the veil of anonymity around cybercriminal offenders, and we hope that it will aid the fight against the growing threat of profit-driven cybercrime,” Dr Bruce said.
“We now have a deeper understanding of the geography of cybercrime, and how different countries specialise in different types of cybercrime.
“By continuing to collect this data, we’ll be able to monitor the emergence of any new hotspots and its possible early interventions could be made in at-risk countries before a serious cybercrime problem even develops.
“For the first time we have reliable data on the location of cybercriminals, and we also have a way to measure their impact. Government agencies and private enterprises tasked with tackling cybercrime now have a much better understanding of the scale of the problem in their own backyard.
“Up until now, you had to be an experienced cybercrime investigator to know where cybercriminals actually live, but now we can share that information with the public, governments and businesses. It means that we now have a much clearer picture of the extent of the problem and can target our efforts in the right direction.”
Another co-author of the study, Associate Professor Jonathan Lusthaus from the University of Oxford in the UK, said cybercrime has largely been an invisible phenomenon because offenders often mask their physical locations by hiding behind fake profiles and highly technical protections.
“Due to the illicit and anonymous nature of their activities, cybercriminals cannot be easily accessed or reliably surveyed. 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 across the world. The best means we have to draw a picture of where these offenders are actually located is to survey those whose job it is to track these people,” Dr Lusthaus said.
Joint author of the study, Professor Federico Varese from Sciences Po in France, said the World Cybercrime Index is the first step in a broader aim to understand the local dimensions of cybercrime production across the world.
“We are hoping to expand the study so that we can determine whether national characteristics like educational attainment, Internet penetration, GDP or levels of corruption are associated with cybercrime. Many people think that cybercrime is global and fluid, but this study supports the view that, much like forms of organised crime, it is embedded within particular contexts,” Professor Varese said.
The World Cybercrime Index has been developed through research collaboration between academics at Monash University, University of Oxford and UNSW and was funded by CRIMGOV, a European Union-supported project based at the University of Oxford and Sciences Po.