Why in the news?

A new research effort, the ‘World Cybercrime Index,’ sheds light on the global cybercrime scenario, ranking India in the 10th position worldwide.

About the World Cybercrime Index

• The World Cybercrime Index has been developed as a joint partnership between the University of Oxford and University of New South Wales, Sydney.
• It has been funded by CRIMGOV, a European Union-supported project.
• The index was developed to identify major cybercrime hotspots globally by ranking countries based on the significant sources of cybercrime at a national level.
• The study ‘Mapping the global geography of cybercrime with the World Cybercrime Index’ has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The five major categories of cybercrime assessed by the study were:

1. Technical products/services (e.g. malware coding, botnet access, access to compromised systems, tool production).
2. Attacks and extortion (e.g. denial-of-service attacks, ransomware).
3. Data/identity theft (e.g. hacking, phishing, account compromises, credit card comprises).
4. Scams (e.g. advance fee fraud, business email compromise, online auction fraud).
5. Cashing out/money laundering (e.g. credit card fraud, money mules, illicit virtual currency platforms).

Key Findings of the Report

• India occupies the 10th position in the cybercrime rankings, with scams involving advance fee payments being the most prevalent type.
• Russia leads the index, followed by Ukraine, China, the US, Nigeria, and Romania, with North Korea, the UK, and Brazil rounding out the top positions.
• Russia and Ukraine emerged as highly technical cybercrime hubs, while Nigerian cybercriminals primarily engaged in less technical forms of cybercrime.

Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024

Attend Now