Japanese cybercrime levels see significant rise

Finjan has claimed that 2008 cybercrime figures from Japan are showing a 15.5 per cent year-on-year annual growth.

The Japlog.jp website was hacked recently with the attackers using a combination of obfuscated and ActiveX code and ended up infecting visitors with malware. A few days later the popular Livedoor.jp website was also compromised by cybercriminals.

For sites rated 41st and sixth in Japan respectively, Finjan claimed that this shows that cybercrime is clearly on the increase in the Japanese market. Chief technology officer Yuval Ben-Itzhak, claimed that recent FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center statistics - which is the closest equivalent to the Japanese figures - showed 207,000 complaints relating to almost $240 million of e-crimes perpetrated over the internet in 2007.

Ben-Itzhak said: "Anecdotal evidence suggests that the volume and value of cybercrime has soared again in 2008 and, with the current economic recession, we fully expect the number of internet scams, hacks and malware-driven infections to increase even faster in 2009.

"As a result, companies, as well as consumers, need to take extreme care to protect their staff, customer lists and financial data against cybercriminals. The Japanese figures, which cover internet-linked cases of fraud, illegal access, libel and threats, show that the incidence of cybercrime tripled between 2004 and 2008."