Cybercrime Inc. Keeps Growing
In August, 11 defendants were formally charged in last year's high-profile
T.J. Maxx data breach in which more than 45 million accounts were compromised
over a couple of years. The defendants included three U.S. citizens as well
as citizens of the Ukraine, Estonia, Belarus and the People's Republic of
China. What's become clear to investigators and security experts alike is
that organizations perpetrating these kinds of attacks are not only increasingly
global, they're becoming nimbler, smarter and more efficient at wreaking
havoc on company networks and profiting from their illegal activities. They
have names like the Russian Business Network, Gray Pigeons, and Honkers
Union of China. And they're growing—in numbers, power and reach.
"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 skillset 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."
Members originate from all over the world, Cassidy said, with large concentrations in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as parts of Africa—typically areas with access to technology coupled with political upheaval and limited financial opportunities.
In recent years, China has also emerged on the world stage as a global security threat as its population soared and economy exploded with a young and highly skilled volunteer labor force. A recent McAfee report found that of 265 countries surveyed, Hong Kong was by far the biggest security risk, with almost 19 percent of Web sites with the .hk domain hosting malware. Hong Kong was seconded only by the .cn domain out of the People's Republic of China, followed by the Philippines, Romania and Russia.
Scott Henderson, a former U.S. military intelligence analyst with a specialty in the Chinese cyberthreat, said that there are about 280,000 to 300,000 individual hackers in China belonging to about 250 cybercrime organizations.
By Stefanie Hoffman