The Symantec Global Internet Security Threat Report claims that global trend shows that cybercrime of moving to the emerging countries.
The report noted that the cybercrime significantly increased in Brazil as well as India. The Chinese market has matured enough that cybercrime rate has begun to drop in the country.
In the year 2009, the biggest cybercrimes were targeted towards particular entities. One such attack was on Google which led to a face-off between the company and the Chinese authorities. Google refused to conform to the censorship laws and has started directing search users to a portal in Hong Kong where censorship is not required.
The list of countries with highest malicious activity was topped by the US followed by China, Brazil, Germany, and India.
The report showed that about 60% of exposed identities in 2009 were due to hacking attacks while most of these were from a single attacker on the credit card processor. The authorities were successful in tracking down the hacker.
As for the web-based attacks, most were on Internet Explorer and Adobe Acrobat/Reader. Venerability in PDF was identified and exploited by hackers which led to PDF related attacks rising from 11% of web-based attacks in
2008 to 49% in 2009.
The detailed report also lists information about other dangerous trends like spasm, phishing and malicious codes
