A team of researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra has published a list of countries designated as world cybercrime hotspots in a new study ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime threats.
The researchers gathered the results after surveying about 100 cybercrime experts from around the world.
Each of the experts was asked to identify the countries that contributed significantly to the sources of the five major types of cybercrime which include:
- Technical products/services (such as malware)
- Attacks and extortion
- Data/identity theft (such as hacking or phishing)
- Scams (such as business email compromise or online auction fraud)
- Cashing out/money laundering (such as credit card fraud)
Top 5 countries listed as global cybercrime hotspots
The new ranking referred to as the World Cybercrime Index (WCI) showed that Russia topped the list as the greatest cybercrime threat, followed by Ukraine, China, the US and Nigeria.
1. Russia
Russia topped with a WCI score of 58.39 and 81.34 attacks recorded. The survey noted that technically, Russian cybercriminals are considered the best and are the most professional with their crimes having the most impact. Russia scored 8.73 in technical skills.
2. Ukraine
Ukraine came in second position with a WCI score of 36.44, a total attack score of 50.76 and a technical skill of 8.24 also showing a high technical skill set among its hackers.
3. China
China scored 27.86 in WCI, a total attack score of 24.24 and its hackers bagged 7.81 score for technical skills.
4. United States
The US was listed in fourth position scoring 25.01 for WCI, and had a total attack score of 17.68 and a technical score of 7.21.
5. Nigeria
Nigeria came in fifth position with a general WCI score of 21.28, a total attack score of 8.41 and a technical skill of 5.80.
Nigeria also came top in the list of countries with the highest number of scams. The country had 70 nominations for scams, a WCI of 52.17 while its closest rival, the US had 27 nominations for scams and a WCI score of 22.72.