In a context of ever increasing growth of malicious cyberactivities, ITU is launching the “Enhancing Cybersecurity in Least Developed Countries” project aiming at ensuring that LDCs can maximize the socio-economic benefits of access to ICTs in a cybersecure environment.
Here are some facts and figures about cybersecurity.
Malware remains the most Dominant Cyber threat
Malware continued to show no sign of slowing down; numbers indicate a steep rise over the last two quarters. In the first quarter of 2013 alone, more than six and a half million new malware samples were created, following the trend of increasingly prevalent malware statistics of previous years. Trojans continue to dominate the threat landscape, representing nearly three out of every four new malware samples in circulation.
Source: Pandasecurity
Other malware detected include autoRun malware, which often hides on USB drives and can allow an attacker to take control of a system, autorun malware has risen rapidly for two quarters reaching 1.7 million new threats. The number of fake antimalware products which can behave as a form of ransomware, extorting money from victims to “clean” their computers also so steady growth. Rootkits, had more than 128 million samples.
Internet Access in Least Developed Countries has increased significantly
The development of cheaper infrastructure technologies has enabled developing and Least Developed Countries to offer Internet services to more people. The popularity of the Internet and its services is growing fast: by the end of 2013 it is estimated that 39% of the world population (2.7 billion people) will be using the internet. In LDCs, the number of Internet users has increased from about 24 million in 2008 to 60 million by early 2013 (Source: ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators Database).
Cybercrime goes mobile and social
One in five online adults (21 percent) has been a victim of either social or mobile cybercrime (Source: Norton). The majority of them are millenial rather than baby boomers.
Number of cybercrime victims increases steadily
Today, we are more interconnected than ever before and overall reliance on the Internet continues to increase. Unfortunately, in this environment cyber-attacks occur rapidly and spread across the globe in minutes without regard to borders, geography, or national jurisdictions. Worldwide, every second, 18 adults become a victim of cybercrime, resulting in more than one-and-a-half million cybercrime victims each day (Source: Symantec).
Sex/Dating the most common spam
The global spam rate rose 3.4 percentage points in July 2013 to 67.6 percent, up from 64.2 percent in June. Trends indicate Education industry continues to be the most targeted while Sex/Dating spam continues is most common category, at 60.7 percent followed by Pharmaceutical spam at 27.9 percent.
USA tops malicious URL volume by country
By the end of the first quarter of 2013 the total number of suspect URLs tallied by McAfee Labs exceeded 64 million, a 12 percent increase over the fourth quarter of last year. These URLs refer to 27.7 million domain names, up 6 percent from the previous period. Majority of this are hosted in the United States USA with (94 percent) of these suspicious URLs hosting malware, exploits, or code that have been designed specifically to compromise computers.
