Russia Has Been Named The World's Largest Cyber Crime Hotspot

Professor Jonathan Lusthaus (photo: x @UNSWCanberra)

JAKARTA - Russia has been named the world's largest cyber crime hotspot according to a new study ranking the most significant source of cybercrime threats. The World Cyber Crime Index has been published after three years of research by academics from the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra.

Russia ranks the top as the location with the greatest cybercrime threat, according to the index. This was followed by Ukraine, China, the United States, and Nigeria. Meanwhile, Britain is ranked eighth on the list - only one rank behind North Korea.

This rating is based on data collected by researchers, which involved surveys of nearly 100 cybercriminals from around the world.

Experts are asked to identify the most significant sources of the five main types of cybercrime, then ranking countries based on the impact, professionalism, and technical skills of cybercriminals.

One of the authors of this study, Dr. Miranda Bruce, said the research would allow cybersecurity agencies to focus on key centers of cybercrime, allocate funds and attention more effectively.

"The research underlying this index will help eliminate confidentiality around cybercriminals, and we hope this will help combat the growing threat of cybercrime," Bruce said.

"We now have a deeper understanding of the geography of cybercrime, and how different countries specialize in different types of cybercrime," he added.

Another co-author, Professor Jonathan Lusthaus, said the index could help illuminate activities that are often difficult to track. "Because of the illegal and anonymous nature of their activities, cybercriminals cannot be easily accessed or surveyed reliably. They are actively hiding themselves," he said.

"If you try to use technical data to map their location, you will also fail, because cybercriminals reflect their attacks around internet infrastructure around the world," he explained.

"The best way we have to draw a picture where these criminals actually exist is to survey those whose job is to track these people," he explained.

Researchers say they hope to expand this study to check whether different national characteristics such as education levels, GDPs, or levels of corruption affect the number of cybercrimes emerging from a country. The World Cyber Crime Index has been published in the journal Plos One.