Cybercrime And Hacking Atlas
A geographic guide with cybercrime threat and target trends in 10 notable countries.
February 20, 2016
When we picture hackers at work, it’s easy to get caught up imagining young men quietly working in a dark Dostoevskian garret in a bleak post-Soviet town. Or, rows of uniformed Chinese in a sterile Far Eastern military office. But are these images realistic? While the former Soviet bloc and China certainly make up their share of global hacking, cybercriminals have a broadly global reach and a great deal of international diversity. Even though major attacks are increasingly carried out by multinational rings, there is still often a national flair to online crime, and countries in Latin America, Western Europe, and the developing world are all well-represented.
Here are some of the notable countries, in no particular order whatsoever.
Sources for population and economic data: CIA Factbook and Wikipedia.
Sources for photos: Pixabay
Turkey is rich both with diverse, ancient history and modern innovation. The country is largely secular and full of entrepreneurial impetus, spanning far beyond the sprawling bazaars of legend. Unfortunately, heavy-handed leaders have recently taken ominous steps, such as enacting temporary bans on social media, which certainly bode poorly for the burgeoning tech startup scene there.
Notable Hackers: Ercan Findikoglu was recently extradited to the United States to face charges that he is responsible for over $55 million in theft. Findikoglu allegedly hacked several payment processing firms, lifted withdrawal limits on stolen prepaid debit cards, and orchestrated fraudulent ATM transactions worldwide.
Population: 79,414,269
Median age: 30.1
GDP: $1.515 trillion
Unemployment rate: 10%
Average monthly salary (USD): $643
Trivia: Cybercrime causes economic harm in Turkey of up to 1.4 percent of the country's GDP.
Trivia: One Turkish hacking collective claims to have deleted roughly $670 billion in outstanding bills within a local utility company's database in 2014
Trivia: This year a German Patriot missile battery in Turkey was taken over by hackers.
China seems to attract the majority of attention when it comes to international hacking, with cybercrimes ranging from theft of intellectual property, to basic fraud to state-sanctioned espionage. Some estimates claim that China is responsible for a full 41% of all DDoS traffic in the world.
Notable Hackers: Emissary Panda, also known as Threat Group 3390, is a well-organized, sophisticated group notorious for attacking foreign embassies, defense contractors, energy concerns, and a wide variety of other organizations worldwide.
Population: 1,367,485,388
Median age: 36.8
GDP: $18.09 trillion
Unemployment rate: 4.1%
Average monthly salary (USD): $396
Trivia: 30% of cyberattacks today are attributed to Chinese hacking.
Trivia: In a first for China, country officials say they've arrested the suspects they believe responsible for the hack of the US Office of Personnel Management that exposed more than 22 million of the most sensitive details about US citizens earlier this year.
When we picture hackers at work, it’s easy to get caught up imagining young men quietly working in a dark Dostoevskian garret in a bleak post-Soviet town. Or, rows of uniformed Chinese in a sterile Far Eastern military office. But are these images realistic? While the former Soviet bloc and China certainly make up their share of global hacking, cybercriminals have a broadly global reach and a great deal of international diversity. Even though major attacks are increasingly carried out by multinational rings, there is still often a national flair to online crime, and countries in Latin America, Western Europe, and the developing world are all well-represented.
Here are some of the notable countries, in no particular order whatsoever.
Sources for population and economic data: CIA Factbook and Wikipedia.
Sources for photos: Pixabay
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