The Business of Organized Cybercrime: Rising Intergang Collaboration in 2018

Banking Trojans and the gangs that operate them continue to plague banks, individuals and organizations with fraudulent transactions facilitated by malware and social engineering schemes. At last check, cybercrime cost the global economy more than $600 billion in 2017 , and forecasts for 2018 predicted $1.5 trillion in losses.

No matter how you turn these numbers, they are a burden that keeps growing and encouraging a rife, complex industry of online crime.

Going Behind the Numbers of the ‘IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index’

Every year, increasingly organized cybercrime gangs shuffle their tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to evade security controls on the micro level and law enforcement on the macro level. Behind each malware named on the top 10 chart below, codes are distributed and operated differently and focus on different parts of the globe. The chart is populated by organized cybercrime gangs that have ties to yet other cybercrime gangs, each doing its part to feed the perpetual supply chain of a digital financial crime economy.

In cybercrime, it can be said that the more things change, the more things stay the same. In 2018, however, I must admit I was finally surprised when two malware gangs that did not appear connected at first began openly collaborating. It thus became clearer than ever that the banking Trojan arena is dominated by groups from the same part of the world, by people who know each other and collaborate to orchestrate high-volume wire fraud.

To learn more about the malware that shaped 2018, let’s begin by looking at the top constituents of the gang-owned Trojan chart and drill down on information gathered by IBM Security for the top three.

To get the stats and continue reading, please click here.