Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Malware Attacks Give Criminals 1,425% Return On Investment

Posted by samzenpus on from the bang-for-your-buck dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Trustwave released a new report which reveals the top cybercrime, data breach and security threat trends. According to their findings, attackers receive an estimated 1,425 percent return on investment for exploit kit and ransomware schemes ($84,100 net revenue for each $5,900 investment). Retail was the most compromised industry making up 43 percent of investigations followed by food and beverage (13 percent) and hospitality (12 percent).

12 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Sliced and Diced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I hope this is not true:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/39x7w5/sourceforge_hijacks_firefox_project/

    1. Re:Sliced and Diced by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Whoever modded that down: The complaint about Sourceforge is on topic, and not just a rehash of older complaints either.

  2. Don't use thousand separators internationally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1,425% is ambiguous. It can be read as 1.425% by people who normally use commas as decimal separators. Thousand separators are meant to be used for clarity, but in an international forum they create confusion instead, so don't use them. Digit grouping is an alternative, but doing that in a typographically correct way requires non-breakable narrow spaces. Honestly, if you need help reading a four digit number, maybe reading isn't for you.

    1. Re:Don't use thousand separators internationally by meza · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ah thank you. Coming from a country where we use comma as a decimal separator I actually did misread this and thought it was a pretty crappy return of investment (due to dissonance or something my brain decided not to interpret what was written within the parentheses).

    2. Re:Don't use thousand separators internationally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      1,425% is ambiguous.

      It's not ambiguous, it's very clear and perfectly acceptable anglophone denotation.

      No it isn't.

      You want an example? South Africa uses commas for decimals. And they're not the only ones.

    3. Re:Don't use thousand separators internationally by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      Here's a set of coordinates. Have fun understanding where commas are meant to separate coordinates and where they're meant to separate thousands.

      574,813,067,805.875,243,554,323,654,371.654,876,484,567,576,549.654,765.763,652,258,436,540.365,347,654.364

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  3. SUBJECT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    How nice of Slashdot to explain why SourceForge is fucked up as it is.

  4. TCOC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is the return before legal fees, restitution and incarceration.
    You have to look at the Total Cost Of Crime when you calculate the ROI.

  5. Crime Pays (sometimes) by Etherwalk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, a lot of people go into crime for money. Human Traffickers make a great return on investment in slaves, for example, and get much less risk of being caught than if you're trafficking guns. It's seriously messed up, but how fast do you think the police would shut down an AK-47 market on the corner as opposed to your neighborhood's center for prostitution?

    Bank robbery also pays, but tends not to pay very well. (Not nearly as well as a good engineering job, IIRC, and more likelihood of your bugs getting detected).

  6. Re:Credit card track data? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

    I assume this is mostly because the US still doesn't have chipped credit cards, or has that changed since a year or so ago when I was there?

    The new ones are chipped. But the replacement cycle on credit cards (mine are usually good for five years) is long enough that a lot of unchipped cards are still out there (about half of mine are chipped, the other half won't expire for a couple-three more years).

    Note that chipped doesn't protect you from credit card fraud - just yesterday I got called by my CC company to verify that I'd really bought something in Arizona that morning (haven't been in AZ in the last five years) - the card in question was chipped....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  7. New Investment Opportunity by Virtucon · · Score: 4, Funny

    So what the TFA is saying is that it's better for me to invest in Malware hackers than the S&P 500. Interesting. Now I'm wondering if there'll be an ETF or Mutual Fund available soon. Symbol: HX0R

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  8. Re:Credit card track data? by Steve+Newall · · Score: 3, Informative

    The liability shift for chip and PIN cards is scheduled for October this year in the US. Although the guestimates vary, probably around 20% of merchants will have an EMV (chip) reader by this time. When chip and PIN was introduced into Europe, there was a sharp increase in credit card fraud in non-chip regions (Canada for example), and when Canada introduced chip and PIN we noticed a sharp decrease in fraud, which we assume was moved into the US.