Cost of Cyber crime = $105 billion? PDF Print E-mail
A great deal of press concerning the CEO of McAfee statement, DeWalt said, "...... that cyber-crime has become a US$105 billion business that now surpasses the value of the illegal drug trade worldwide." In a follow up comment in McAfee's blog Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics trying to stress the input came from Reuters and here for CNN, based upon the Government Accountability Office recognized this in its June 2007 report.

However, DeWalt was right from the perspective ".....clearly, placing a value on the size of the cybercrime economy is a real challenge."

As an example the recent VeriSign / iDefense analysis on the Russian Business Network (RBN) showed - see: The Economist article - just for one venture, Rock Phish, they netted $150 million in one year. As an example the RBN’s network, its affiliates, “free-hosting” sites, and associated businesses, the overall dollar value is much more substantial.


However, the RBN is one of the most obvious for quantification. If one was to include malware, spyware, spam, and general BadWare, which most end users who have been victims would definitely call - cyber-crime -. Therefore the $105 billion quoted is an underestimate?
 
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