“Britain is under attack in a cyber war launched by criminals, terrorists and, in the future maybe even other states” – Fiona Foster, ITV’s Tonight programme, Feb 2011.
Cyber attacks categorised as tier one risk (highest possible priority) in UK National Security Review, late 2010.
UK Home Office puts annual cost of cybercrime to UK citizens and business at £27 billion – £21bn to businesses, £2.2bn to government and £3.1bn to individuals (2010 figures).
Intellectual property theft costs UK companies £9.2bn, industrial espionage £7.6bn, extortion £2.2bn, and direct online theft £1.3bn. £1bn is lost through theft of customer data - Home Office.
Cyber criminals are fearless because they don’t think they’ll be caught – UK security minister Baroness Neville-Jones.
37% polled by NOL said the threat of computer crime puts them off shopping and banking online; less than half (49%) felt safe online.
“The creation of a computer virus called Stuxnet planted in the computer systems of an Iranian nuclear processing plant has dramatically upped the game” – ITV News.
Armed with fake prepaid payroll debit cards and PINs, thieves raided 2,100 money machines in 280 cities on three continents within 12 hours, walking off with more than $9 million in cash – FBI Cyber Division report, Nov 2008.
Global online fraud costs more than $40bn a year - Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister.
90% of US companies which responded to a Computer Security Institute survey detected computer security breaches in the previous year; 74% acknowledged financial losses as a result.
“We can now be attacked by criminals who do not need to come to this territory” – Roger Gaspar, Director of Intelligence, UK National Criminal Intelligence Service.
“The cyber-crime black market diversified its business model in 2010, and now sells a much broader range of hacked confidential information, including bank credentials, log-ins, passwords, fake credit cards and more” – PandaLabs (cloud security consultancy), US 2011.
“Prices for botnet rental for sending spam (using bot-infected zombie computers, for example) vary depending on the number of computers used and the frequency of the spam, or the rental period. Prices start at $15 and rise to $20 for the rental of a SMTP server or VPN to guarantee anonymity” – PandaLabs (cloud security) report 2011, US.
“The Stuxnet worm is a ‘groundbreaking’ piece of malware so devious in its use of unpatched vulnerabilities, so sophisticated in its multipronged approach, that the security researchers who tore it apart believe it may be the work of state-backed professionals” - Liam O Murchu, manager of operations with Symantec's security response team.
There will be 30.9 million social network users by 2015 - eMarketer, February 2011.
Worldwide sales of smartphones overtook PCs for the first time in Q4 2010 - 100.9 million devices were shipped, while PC manufacturers shipped just 92.1m units.
