KindleBruce Schneier comments on an NYT report on cybercrime that shows that there's just not much money to be had in being a ripoff artist. Dinei Florêncio and Cormac Herley wrote:
A cybercrime where profits are slim and competition is ruthless also offers simple explanations of facts that are otherwise puzzling. Credentials and stolen credit-card numbers are offered for sale at pennies on the dollar for the simple reason that they are hard to monetize. Cybercrime billionaires are hard to locate because there aren’t any. Few people know anyone who has lost substantial money because victims are far rarer than the exaggerated estimates would imply.
The authors frame cybercrime as a "tragedy of the commons," where the overfishing (overphishing) by crooks has reduced everyone's margins to nothing, making it hard graft indeed. Meanwhile, cybercrime estimates are subject to the same lobbynomics used to calculate losses from music downloading and profits from drug seizures:
Suppose we asked 5,000 people to report their cybercrime losses, which we will then extrapolate over a population of 200 million. Every dollar claimed gets multiplied by 40,000. A single individual who falsely claims $25,000 in losses adds a spurious $1 billion to the estimate. And since no one can claim negative losses, the error can't be canceled.
Cybercrime as a Tragedy of the Commons
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.
MORE: Business • crime • cybersecurity • security • statistics
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