From April to June 2012, 22.5% of all monitored attempts originated in the US, 49 million more than January through March, when the nation was responsible for 17.4% of global hacks. China was responsible for 15.8% of the monitored global total, and Russia for 13.3%, up on 13.7% and 12.4%, respectively.
The Origin of Hacks report is based on intrusion detection logs monitored by DShield, a network security community based in the US. NCC said that the statistics do not necessarily indicate successful access, only unauthorized attempts, and attacks can be routed through IP addresses in different countries.
The top ten hacking nations remain broadly similar to first quarter, with the US, China and Russia maintaining their top three positions.
“The first-world countries with the largest populations seemed to have the largest volume of attacks in terms of origin”, said Paul Vlissidis, NCC’s technical director. He noted that Ukraine has climbed to fourth place in the list of countries originating the most hacks, up from fifth place in the last report. “Ukraine is famous as a country that harbors a lot of cybercriminals” Vlissidis told Infosecurity.
The UK slipped from seventh to ninth place, responsible for 2.1% of global hacks over the last quarter. “There has been an increase in enforcement activity in the UK of late….The general message going out is that the UK is not a good place for cybercrime”, he commented.
To better combat cybercrime, NCC is calling for greater transparency when it comes to data breaches and greater collaboration among nations and businesses. “The brush-it-under-the-carpet mentality is not going to effect the right kind of change in organizations to get the security improvement that is needed. So greater openness and transparency would be a good way forward”, Vlissidis opined.
Separately, NCC Group announced that it acquired US-based security testing firm Matasano Security for up to £8.4 million – initially £4.2m, then two further payments up to £4.2m in total over next 24 months against performance-related targets.
NCC said it was financing the purchase using existing debt facilities and internally generated cash flow. Matasano had annual revenues of $5 million.