NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

anking fraud. Malware creators are rapidly developing and adapting malware to avoid
the security prevention techniques from banks. Operation Pegasus, launched by
Brazilian authorities, arrested 85 people in 2005 as part of a ring planting keyloggers
(software that logs people’s keyboard activity) that helped the alleged criminals steal
approximately US$33 million from bank accounts. 102 However by the end of 2005, Brazil
still reportedly had the highest concentration of phishing-based keyloggers that target
Brazilian financial institutions, using deception techniques written in Portuguese.
Since then, the number of cyber attacks has continued to escalate in Brazil, according to
the country's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), from 68,000 in 2005 to
222,528 in 2008. Moreover, from January to March 2009 the attacks have already
reached 220,000 almost the total accumulated figure for 2008. The majority of the cyber
attacks are fraud-related (80 per cent of the attacks), and are mostly originated locally
(93 per cent originated in Brazil). 103
(E) Although cybercriminal activity remained low in India compared with other emerging
economies, there has been a leap in cybercrime in recent years – reported cases of
cases of spam, hacking and fraud have multiplied 50-fold from 2004 to 2007. 104 One
recent report ranked India in 2008 as the fourteenth country in the world hosting
phishing websites. 105 Additionally, the booming of call centres in India has generated a
niche for cybercriminal activity in harvesting data (methods further explained in section
2.2.1 below).
Cybercrime in India: harvesting data in call centres
India is the world leader in business process outsourcing (BPO). The country’s top ten
BPO firms hire up to 25,000 new employees per year, and financial services are one of
chatrooms. Smith, T., (27 th October 2003), Brazil Becomes a Cybercrime Lab, New York Times,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E3DA1131F934A15753C1A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pa
gewanted=2, accessed 4 th December 2008.
102 Haines, L (2005) “Brazil cuffs 85 in online bank hack dragnet: Operation Pegasus”, The Register.
103 See www.cert.br/stats.
104 Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): Annual Report, 2007.
105 Symantec (2008): Report on India cybercrime.
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