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Jamillah Knowles
Jamillah is the UK Editor for The Next Web. She's based in London. You can hear her on BBC Radio 5Live's Outriders. Follow on Twitter @jemi Jamillah is the UK Editor for The Next Web. She's based in London. You can hear her on BBC Radio 5Live's Outriders. Follow on Twitter @jemimah_knight or drop a line to [email protected]
For the first time, the UK is making an appearance in the top ten hacks survey by IT assurance provider, NCC Group.
The Origin of Hacks report covers the first quarter of 2012 and tracks the countries responsible for computer hacking. Russia and the Netherlands have seen an increase and the UK now occupies 7th place, being responsible for 2.4 per cent of the world’s hacking attempts within this time scale.
Russia has also shown a large increase, with over 12% of global hacks originating there. It only accounted for 3.5% in the previous findings. This leap has brought it to third place in the NCC Group’s table, behind the United States and China.
According to NCC Group, the hacking origin league table has radically changed in just three months. Italy, France and India have all dropped out of the top ten, while the Ukraine and South Korea have taken up residence.
The statistics do not necessarily indicate successful access, just unauthorised attempts. Of course attacks can also be routed through IP addresses in different countries. So smarter hackers may be placed elsewhere and shield their country of origin.
Rob Cotton, NCC Group’s chief executive, comments: “Cyber crime is perpetually evolving, the dramatic increase of hacks from certain countries over a three month period just goes to show the fluidity and quick-changing nature of the issue.”
If hackers are indeed routing through IP addresses in different countries, then it’s going to become a lot harder to collate statistics like this accurately in future.
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