Cyber Crime Poses a Major Security Threat

“In a report from the US Treasury, cybercrime was evaluated at more than $100 billion in 2005, surpassing the drug traffic and becoming FBI's third worry, after terrorism and counterintelligence operations,” the experts Tarek Kuzban and Costin Raiv of the Russian IT major Kaspersky Lab told Khaleej Times at Gitex.

“Just for a comparison, the security market at the moment is evaluated at around $20 billion, so five times smaller than cybercrime. In essence, that means that people lose about five times more money than they are willing to invest in security software,” they argued.

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According to them the growth in the number of malware that we are seeing at the moment seems to have gone exponential. “For example, so far in 2008 we have received more malware than we have received in all the previous years altogether, bringing the total number of known malicious programs to somewhere close to 20 million. With such a growth comes a problem of similar complexity – handling the malware and providing the customers with adequate protection. So it is important to work with the security agencies to reduce such crimes, rather than focusing solely on developing software against them.”

“At Kaspersky Lab, we've been trying to say that the Internet – which is an inherently insecure place – needs the equivalent of the real world police, an organisation which transgresses the geopolitical borders and that can follow, trace and catch the cybercriminals all around the world. From that point of view, we've worked for various law enforcement institutions from all around the world,” they said. Pretty much every other country across the world are facing the cybercrime wave.

These kind of attacks began 5-10 years ago in South America, moved to North America then Europe and they are now hitting Middle East as e-banking and are becoming ubiquitous.

There are things such as trading websites, where zombie armies are being sold or where cybercriminals offer their services for a fee. It is common to see such groups advertising for 'job offers', that is, looking for investors that can finance the creation and deployment of malware.

The rise of cybercrime has resulted in the development and creation of what we are nowadays calling 'The Malware Ecosystem.'

ramavarman@khaleejtimes.ae