Nigeria has been ranked fifth in a global report on sources of cybercrime activities, coming behind Russia, which ranked number one, and Ukraine, China and the United States, which occupied the second, third and fourth positions respectively.
The report, described as the first-ever World Cybercrime Index, was produced by researchers from the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and identifies the globe’s major cybercrime hotspots by ranking the most significant sources of cybercrime at a national level.
Other countries that make the top 10 list of cybercrime hotspots include Romania, North Korea, United Kingdom, Brazil and India.
While noting that the geography of cybercrime offenders and the corresponding level of ‘cyber criminality’ present within each country has been largely unknown, one of the report’s authors, Dr Jonathan Lusthaus explained: “Due to the illicit and anonymous nature of their activities, cybercriminals cannot be easily accessed or reliably surveyed. They are actively hiding.
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“If you try to use technical data to map their location, you will also fail as cybercriminals bounce their attacks around internet infrastructure across the world.
“The best means we have to draw a picture of where these offenders are actually located is to survey those whose job it is to track these people.”
Also commenting on the report, Dr Miranda Bruce of the University of Oxford and UNSW Canberra said: “The research that underpins the index will help remove the veil of anonymity around cybercriminal offenders, and we hope that it would aid the fight against the growing threat of profit-driven cybercrime. (Nairametrics)
