Profiting From Cybercrime
Friday, May 15, 2009
How much money is actually made from computer crime? Do companies lose money fighting against it? I've gathered some numbers to illustrate the burgeoning black market of cybercrime.
According to a recent report from security firm Finjan, fake antivirus software can bring in an average of $10,800 a day in profits. At $50 per user that's a lot of people being scammed, not to mention left vulnerable to viruses. Respondents to the Computer Security Institute's 2008 security assessment report that the removal of zombie or "bot" computers from their networks cost an average of $345,600 last year. The Business Software Alliance reports that piracy cost the software industry $50 billion in 2008.
Researchers investigating the Storm worm found that spam remains highly profitable. Storm advertises, among other things, pharmaceuticals, netting a potential $7,000 to $9,500 during the height of its spam campaign. This extrapolates to $3.5 million a year in revenue, with 3,500 to 8,500 newly infected computers every day.
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Posted byTriona Guidry at 5:24 AM
Labels: antivirus, malware, scareware, security, spyware