The Underground Economy

Symantec published its report into the Underground Economy today. It makes for some interesting reading. Not least as to how ‘big’ and widespread it is.

EMEA is second to the USA in terms of underground economy servers. While the top advertiser has more than $144,000 worth of goods for sale. If you translate this into potential worth (ie, you empty the bank accounts and max out the credit cards on offer) then it is worth a staggering $6.4 million!

Nearly 70,000 unique advertisers were seen in the 12 months, on the observed underground servers, which is a lot of cyber-criminals no matter how you count it. Total value of goods offered… $276 million with an exploit value of more than $6 billion. Big business… which is why this is not some student sitting at home, but rather organised crime with Trojan creators, web exploiters, exploit experts, traffic sellers, fraudsters and rogue hosting companies.

November 24, 2008 | Filed Under announcements, cyber-crime, security 

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