Scams, ransoms, data theft… The turnover loss of French companies has been estimated at more than one billion euros since January. Investigation of this parallel economy.
An email, signed from your bank. A link to a trusted site. And a home page, almost identical to the original. Nothing suspicious at first glance. “Do you want to confirm the operation?” delivers the message. A phone number appears at the bottom of the page. What if a thief was waiting on the phone? Caution in this matter is not excessive.
According to the cybersecurity company, 327,300 French people have already had their personal data stolen since the beginning of the year. Worse yet, some of them wouldn’t even have noticed. A figure that reveals the scope of cyber attacks, despite all the precautions taken by operators and banks. Increasingly better organized, criminals have learned to use emails, telephones and social networks to their advantage.
Scams, ransom demands, data theft… The good old criminal ways get a makeover online. “In the United States, cybercrime generates more revenue each year than all traditional techniques, such as pickpocketing, robbery, armed robbery, with or without a hood,” testifies Eviatar Matania, former director of the Israeli office of National Cyber Security.
Victims of Orange, Altice and MSC
The sums involved are colossal. According to an estimate by the United Nations Office dating from 2020, the total revenue of cybercriminals is estimated at 1.5 trillion dollars per year, that is, 1.5 times the revenue from counterfeiting and 2.8 times the of drug trafficking. Less risky on the surface, online crime has found its place among other clandestine activities, the UN insists.
This parallel economy is fed by three main sources. According to , 60% comes from the sale of illegal products online, 30% from theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, and only 0.07% from revenue from cyberattacks and ransomware. However, the latter are the most spectacular and[…]