Cybersecuity Impacts

1. How does cyber technology impact interactions between offenders and victims?

Emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing are becoming commonplace. Such technologies might pave the way for a more cost-effective and efficient future for business. Inversely, emerging technologies may give opportunities for the criminal community to perform larger, more lucrative, and perhaps more complex cybercrimes.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures’ 2020 annual cybercrime study, the worldwide cost of cybercrime is expected to reach USD 6 trillion per year by 2021. [1] A ransomware assault on a company costs an average of USD 133,000. [2] This sort of criminality is not going away. However, while most ransomware assaults presently enter a business via email, with the widespread use of IoT, a new delivery channel for both mass and targeted attacks is on the horizon.

The number of Internet-connected devices, including machines, sensors, appliances, and cameras that comprise the IoT, continues to expand. By 2025, the International Data Corporation predicts 41.6 billion connected IoT devices (or “things”) would generate 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data.

As a result, the attack surface for cybercrime is expanding, as predicted by two major technology companies: Microsoft’s digital growth and data volumes online will be 50 times greater in 2020 than they were in 2016; and Cisco has predicted that its cloud computing data center traffic will account for 95 percent of total data center traffic by 2021.

For as long as computers have been, cybercriminals, particularly hackers, have been investigating software and hardware for security flaws. However, finding and exploiting security flaws used to be a time-consuming process in which hackers had to methodically investigate different areas of a system or application until they discovered an opening. Hackers can now employ machine-learning AI bots[3] to automate the procedure. As a result, cybercrime has increased as a result of technological advancements.

Manipulation of developing technology for the purpose of committing cybercrime

Cybercriminals are always adapting their strategies and leveraging the newest developing technologies to make their cybercrimes more successful, quicker, and adaptive to current safety measures. This makes it difficult for investigators and cyber security teams to identify evidence and methods. This is exemplified by the way harmful bots masquerade legitimate users in order to gain access to security systems.

Bots achieve this through locating numerous methods to drain money from websites and accounts, including account takeovers. This is where big bot collectives break passwords and test stolen credentials in attempt to get access to accounts in a short period of time. Personally identifiable information from many accounts can also be gathered and sold, displayed on the Internet, or used to construct counterfeit identities, opening the door to fresh ways of identity theft.

Emerging technologies are being utilized to enhance captcha cracking systems, identify flaws in existing defensive systems, create new malware that can elude detection, and identify cloud computing targets in real time by gathering and analyzing data from a variety of public domain sources. These cybercrimes get increasingly exact, targeted, and imaginative as new technologies are used, increasing the number of possible victims.