Internet fraudsters beat the crunch

Internet fraud is becoming a “recession-proof economy” with all the sophistication of a legitimate business model, according to a report published on Monday.

The industry is worth a potential $7bn, according to Symantec, the world’s largest maker of security software, with stolen bank account information starting at £6.50 ($10) and credit card numbers selling for as little as 7p each.

The report, which quantifies the scale of global cybercrime for the first time, calculated the value of the industry on the assumption that all fraudulent credit card limits were reached and bank accounts emptied.

Symantec said goods, services and information were being sent at ever faster speeds round the globe via online forums, hosted by servers whose geographic locations were constantly changing to evade detection. Cybercrime was anecdotally growing “very rapidly”, the company said, in spite of the absence of comparative data from previous years.

“These forums are a genuine marketplace where people are playing different roles of buying and selling,” said Liam O’Murchu, security analyst at Symantec. “It does appear to be apeing real business models.

“It’s a little bit like when e-business was kicking in. It’s a free market in labour and an international market.”

Symantec monitored servers across the world as the basis for its report and found more than 69,000 fraudsters advertising their services over the past year, sending 44,321,095 messages to underground forums.

Symantec found that credit card information was the most advertised category of goods and services, accounting for 31 per cent of the total, with financial accounts the next biggest on 20 per cent.