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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).

6 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/

  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).

  3. 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).

  4. 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"
  5. 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.