FBI Report: Deconstructing The Wide Scope Of Internet Crime
Hottest crimes reported to IC3 last year include ransomware and email scams via business email compromise and all account compromise attacks.
May 27, 2016
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt6d90778a997de1cd/blt040448ae2dce0ad3/64f0db2a15ed1485dbad5e7b/01-ic3.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
The FBI recently released its annual data dump from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which offers up the consolidated information gleaned from a year's worth of criminal complaints made to the agency from within the U.S. and worldwide. The 2015 Internet Crime Report data offers some insight into the types of complaints made to law enforcement and at least a glimpse into the scope of Internet crime affecting citizens and businesses.
Over the last five years, the IC3 has received an average of close to 300,000 complaints per year. These include a wide range of Internet scams hitting victims worldwide. By The Justice Department's best figures, only about 15% of fraud victims report their crimes to law enforcement.
According to IC3, approximately 44% of the complaints they received came tied with some kind of financial loss. These losses totaled over $1 billion, with an average of over $8,000 per loss complaint reported.
Approximately 80% of IC3's complaints come from within the U.S., with victims in California outnumbering other states by a large margin. Other top states include Florida, Texas, New York and Illinois.
According to the IC3, Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are defined as a sophisticated scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments. The scam is carried out by compromising legitimate business email accounts through social engineering or computer intrusion techniques to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds."
These phishing scams are usually perpetrated through spoofed emails, intercepted facsimiles or telephone communications giving instruction to redirect invoice payments. The last two years have seen the rise of attackers targeting victims using spoofed accounts of their CEOs and CFOs to direct them to send money to fraudulent sources. The BEC losses totaled $263 million in 2015.
IC3 calls Email Account Compromise (EAC) the sister scam to BEC, just targeting individuals instead of businesses. EAC losses alone accounted for $11 million last year.
Unless you've been living under a rock, you understand the rapid growth ransomware experienced last year and the IC3 confirmed that with its own data. The FBI says that it received nearly 2,500 complaints with losses over $1.6 million from ransomware scams.
FBI calls IC3 the central point for Internet crime victims to report and alert the appropriate agencies of suspected criminal Internet activity. The IC3 helps funnel complaints to the right agencies and task forces, and also uses all of the data it receives, analyzes and coordinates to produce public service announcements, scam alerts and other communications to the public, to law enforcement agencies and to businesses in order to help mitigate future risk.
FBI calls IC3 the central point for Internet crime victims to report and alert the appropriate agencies of suspected criminal Internet activity. The IC3 helps funnel complaints to the right agencies and task forces, and also uses all of the data it receives, analyzes and coordinates to produce public service announcements, scam alerts and other communications to the public, to law enforcement agencies and to businesses in order to help mitigate future risk.
The FBI recently released its annual data dump from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which offers up the consolidated information gleaned from a year's worth of criminal complaints made to the agency from within the U.S. and worldwide. The 2015 Internet Crime Report data offers some insight into the types of complaints made to law enforcement and at least a glimpse into the scope of Internet crime affecting citizens and businesses.
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