Cybercrime Report: Mobile threats on the rise

Symantec estimates damage from web crimes at $ 388 billion

The security software manufacturer Symantec http://symantec.com presented the Cybercrime Report 2011 in Vienna today, Monday. For the first time, the costs that are directly and indirectly caused by online crime have been put into figures. In the global calculation, they amount to $ 388 billion. Symantec is also increasingly devoting itself to threats in the mobile area, because the threat potential is increasing significantly on the Android platform in particular. The company also presented the new product line, which also includes a new addition with Norton Tablet Security.

China tops the number of victims

20.000 people were included in the surveys when compiling the report, and the result reads dramatically. Over a million users are victims of cybercrime every day, 80 percent of male and 73 percent of female Internet users have already become acquainted with Internet crime on average.

A spicy detail on the side: men visit erotic sites four times more often and use dating platforms twice as often as women. However, the term cybercrime is broad and includes not only classic virus and malware infections or phishing attacks, but also sexual harassment or bullying on online platforms.

China (85 percent), South Africa (84 percent) and Mexico (83 percent) have the highest proportion of users affected by web crimes, followed by Brazil, India and Singapore (80 percent each). But the problem is not unknown in Germany either, over three quarters of Internet surfers appear in the statistics as being affected.

Web crime cost $ 388 billion last year. Of this, 274 billion is accounted for by lost working hours and 114 billion by direct or indirect monetary damage - including stolen money or investments in repairing the consequences of an attack. Symantec also provided a breakdown for Germany: Here the total damage was $ 33,7 billion, of which $ 10,9 billion was booked as time costs and $ 22,8 billion as financial expense.

Consciousness Paradox

A somewhat paradoxical picture emerges when researching the causes: According to the report, 74 percent of users are aware of the danger while browsing the Internet. Around nine out of ten users even believe that more should be done against online crime. However, 41 percent of online users are out and about without adequate protection, i.e. they have no or outdated security software installed.

It is therefore entirely logical that the majority of the cybercrimes recorded were in the area of ​​viruses and malware (54 percent), more than half of them within the past twelve months. In second place are scams, i.e. various types of fraud. A tenth of the facts have already been measured in the mobile sector.

Android under attack

In general, Symantec expert Candid Wüest states that the threat situation for smartphone and tablet users is worsening, which is not least due to the increasing popularity of the devices. The focus of cyber gangsters is currently heavily on Google's Android, as the platform is open, widespread and it is relatively easy to place apps in the market. The pests brought in via third-party programs are used for various purposes. In addition to reading out user data, this includes receiving expensive premium SMS or manipulating app rankings. The security team is also increasingly seeing a trend towards building mobile botnets.

However, Wüest also warns that iOS users should not feel 100 percent secure either. Although the platform tends to be more secure due to Apple's restrictions in terms of content and technology, the controls do not always work reliably. In addition, there is already proof-of-concept code, which shows that the infection of iPhones without jailbreak is also within the realms of feasibility.

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