Vendors of security solutions are investing a tremendous amount of time and money in research so they can stay at least one step ahead of cybercriminals. Yet, cybercriminals are not passive bystanders; for them the internet is their playground, where they vie with one another to outsmart the detection systems on computers, servers and in the cloud. Darknet forums are abuzz with their bluster about their progress – forums that don’t go unnoticed by security experts. An expert’s perspective from the sidelines.
Back in the day when people were just starting to use computers more widely, up-and-coming hackers just wanted to show off. In contrast, the cyberattacks we’ve been seeing since those days indicate there’s a lot of money to be made. According to experts, damages caused by these attacks around the globe are projected to reach $11 trillion annually. This figure does not only include the data they plunder but also the damages caused by production standstills, lost contracts and orders, just to name a few. Experts have pinpointed a figure of $230 billion for Germany, Austria and Switzerland combined. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics and intelligence platform, tracks payments to cryptocurrency wallets, among other things. Their analysts calculate that ransom demands of nearly $820 million are paid globally each year due to ransomware. [...]
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Back in the day when people were just starting to use computers more widely, up-and-coming hackers just wanted to show off. In contrast, the cyberattacks we’ve been seeing since those days indicate there’s a lot of money to be made. According to experts, damages caused by these attacks around the globe are projected to reach $11 trillion annually. This figure does not only include the data they plunder but also the damages caused by production standstills, lost contracts and orders, just to name a few. Experts have pinpointed a figure of $230 billion for Germany, Austria and Switzerland combined. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics and intelligence platform, tracks payments to cryptocurrency wallets, among other things. Their analysts calculate that ransom demands of nearly $820 million are paid globally each year due to ransomware. [...]
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