AUSTRALIA CYBERCRIME STATISTICS FROM AusCERT IN AUSTRALIA SHOW COMPUTER THEFT TO BE A MAJOR PROBLEM INTERNET BUSINESS LAW SERVICES, Internet Law & E-Commerce Law News Portals.

Martha L. Arias, IBLS Director.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007


AusCERT, Australian High Tech Crime Centre, and various state, territory and federal police agencies provided the most recent report on cybercrime in Asustralia. This report groups 17 types of cybercrimes occurred in Australia during the year 2005. Data was collected from a survey responded by 181 companies and government agencies.

The most common cybercrime in Australia during 2005, accounting for over 63%, was in the category of virus/worm/trojan infection. Laptop theft constituted the second largest category with almost 58%. Denial of service attack was the third top cybercrime with about 22% of the cases. The fourth in the list of cybercrimes was the so-called 'degradation of network performance associated with heavy scanning,' wich accounted for 21% of the cases reported. Following this line of cybercrime cases, the fifth most common cybercrime in Australia during 2005 was ‘theft of computer hardware or devices.' ‘Unauthorised access to privileged information by insider' accounted for 19% of the cases; following by ‘theft/breach of proprietary or confidential information' (18%); ‘computer system abused' by insiders (about 9%); indentity theft (9%); website defecement (8%); theft of hand-held computers (7%); outsider system penetration (6%); financia fraud (5%); sobotage of datanetworks (4%); telecommunications fraud (3%) and the last in the list is ‘interception of telecommunications ‘ with 1% of the reported cases.

It could be inferred from this information that in Australia damage to computer systems and computer theft are the predominant cybercrimes constrasting with privacy and identity theft cybercrimes common in the United States.

Other survey conducted by the 2005 Australian computer crime and security survey. Brisbane: AusCERT grouped cybercrimes and the costs associated with them. For instance, the most costly cybercrime was ‘denial of service attack', which reported a total lost of $8.9 million followed by virus/worm/trojan infection with 2.7 million andcomputer system abused with 2.4 million. The survey further reported that the cost of computer crimes experienced by 110 of the organizations surved produced a total lost of 16.9 million in Australia.

Web Blog Editor Note..........good reference weblink below.
http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/cybercrime.html