The FBI has released its annual report on cybercrime that affects a large number of people in the US, noting a number of complaints and financial losses in 2020 compared to 2019. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received, in 2020, 791,790 complaints – a 69% increase from 2019 – of suspected Internet crimes that caused losses of more than $4 billion.
While most complaints involved phishing attacks, no-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion, about half of the losses were due to BEC scams, romance scams, as well as investment or trust-based scams.
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According to the IC3 report, 19,369 BEC/EAC fraud reports were filed in 2020, (19% fewer than in 2019). However, this type of cybercrime alone caused losses of $1.8 million (down from $1.7 billion in 2019).
Crane Hassold, senior director of threat research at Agari, referring to BEC scams, said that when we consider phishing as a subset of this cybercriminal activity, the economic impact approaches $2.1 billion. BEC scams are carried out by hacking into business email accounts and modifying transaction details so that the money is transferred to a bank account controlled by the attacker.
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A trend that was strongly observed in 2020 was the use of stolen identities and the conversion of money into cryptocurrencies. In these cases, a victim provided their identity to the fraudster.
One type of cybercrime included in the FBI’s annual report is ransomware, with 2,474 complaints and losses of more than $29.1 million. While the figures are small, they reflect an increase compared to 2019, when the IC3 received 2,047 complaints and losses were more than $8.9 million.
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Ransomware is a multi-billion dollar business that has never stopped growing, with ransom demands from some gangs averaging over $1 million. For example, last year, the Netwalker ransomware gang earned $25 million in ransoms from its victims in just five days. A partner gang is estimated to have earned over $27 million from this activity.
Other ransomware operations – Maze, Conti, Egregor, REvil, Ryuk, Doppel Paymer – were responsible for a larger number of attacks last year and earned even higher amounts of money. These gangs target “high-revenue” companies that lose more from downtime or data breaches than they do from paying the ransom. Many of these attacks remain under wraps to avoid legal complications.
In conclusion, data from the FBI's latest report to the Internet Crime Complaint Center shows that cybercrime increased significantly in 2020, both in terms of complaints and the money lost by victims.
Source: bleepingcomputer.com
