After three years of intense research, an international team of researchers compiled the first ever “World Cybercrime Index.” This index identifies the key cybercrime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime at a national level. This work was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.
Results show that a small number of countries represent the greatest cybercriminals. The list is topped by Russia, followed by Ukraine, China, the USA, Nigeria, and Romania. The UK comes in at number eight.
According to the authors, this study will enable the public and private sectors to focus their resources on key areas and spend less time on countries where the problem is not 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,” said Dr Bruce from the University of Oxford. “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 it is possible early interventions could be made in at-risk countries before a serious cybercrime problem even develops.”
The index was calculated based on a survey of 92 leading cybercrime experts from around the world. The experts were asked to consider five categories of cybercrime, nominate the countries they consider to be the most important sources of each type of crime and then rank each country according to impact, professionalism and skill of their cybercriminals.
“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,” said Dr Jonathan Lusthaus from the University of Oxford.
“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,” added Professor Varese, co-author of the study.
Bruce M, Lusthaus J, Kashyap R, Phair N, Varese F (2024) Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index. PLoS ONE 19(4): e0297312. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297312