Cybercrime more lucrative than the global drug business

AT&T's Chief Security Officer, Ed Amoroso, testified to Congress recently about the size and scope of global cybercriminal activity. In his testimony, he says, "Last year the FBI announced that revenues from cyber-crime, for the first time ever, exceeded drug trafficking as the most lucrative illegal global business, estimated at reaping more than $1 trillion annually in illicit profits."

The primary activity he warns Congress about is the threat of cyber-warfare. An example of this is where criminals or terrorists seize control of a large number of PCs via a botnet, and use those nodes to launch a large-scale distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against US interests. He cites the example of Estonia, where 2 years ago a large-scale cyber attack produced catastrophic results: "The entire country was disconnected from the Internet."

Certainly, DDOS attacks, botnets and cyber-warfare are among the most dangerous cyber-security threats to the US and to the Internet as a whole. What is even more alarming is the massive scale and scope of cybercriminal activity as a whole: $1 trillion, larger than even the global drug trade. It will take significant effort and coordination between governments and the private sector to address these threats. We at Dasient have already joined this effort. Look for future announcements from us about how we are addressing the growing threat of cybercrime.