Russian hackers get big slice of cyber crime billions

Russian hackers rank second in global cyber crime market as they earned about $4.5 billion in 2011. It’s almost twice than a year before, a report reveals.

Russian speaking hackers account for 36% of cyber crimes around the world last year, while English speaking hackers make up to 40% and those from China – about 18%, according to the study, prepared by Group IB.There are not only computer geeks, but also traditional crime groups getting their own piece of the growing cyber criminality, the study reveals. “Cyber crimes require not only skills, but also investment,” it said. Russian hackers made $41 million from selling vulnerabilities of computer schemes and $230 million from outsourcing.In total cyber criminals made $12.5 billion from their activities, while hackers from Russia got $2.3 billion and those working outside of Russia “earned” $2.1 billion. Fraud schemes and spam are considered the most profitable Internet crimes as they brought hackers $942 million and $830 million respectively.As for damage, companies around the world lost about $100 billion because of cyber crimes, according to the data provided by the computer security company Kaspersky Lab. The figures don’t include the sums stolen from bank accounts.