The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was tasked with conducting a comprehensive study of the problem of cybercrime. The study, Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime, was conducted from February 2012 to July 2012, with information received from 69 member states. The study covered eight topics, organized into chapters: (1) Connectivity and cybercrime; (2) The global picture; (3) Legislation and frameworks; (4) Criminalization; (5) Law enforcement and investigations; (6) Electronic evidence and criminal justice; (7) International cooperation; and (8) Prevention. This comprehensive study highlights lessons learned from current and past efforts, and presents possible options for future responses.
The findings from the Global Picture Section, include the following:
- Cybercrime acts show a broad distribution across financial-driven acts, computer- content related acts, as well as acts against the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of computer systems.
- Perceptions of relative risk and threat vary between governments and businesses.
- Individual cybercrime victimization is significantly higher than for ‘conventional’ crime forms. Victimization rates for online credit card fraud, identify theft, responding to a phishing attempt, and experiencing unauthorized access to an email account, vary between 1 and 17 per cent of the online population.
- Individual cybercrime victimization rates are higher in countries with lower levels of development, highlighting a need to strengthen prevention efforts in these countries.
- Private sector enterprises in Europe report victimization rates of between 2 and 16 per cent for acts such as data breach due to intrusion or phishing.
- Criminal tools of choice for cybercrime, such as botnets, have global reach. More than one million unique IP addresses globally functioned as command and control servers for botnets in 2011.
- Internet content targeted for removal by governments includes child pornography and hate speech, but also defamation and government criticism, raising human rights law concerns in some cases.
- Some estimates place the total global proportion of internet traffic estimated to infringe copyright at almost 24 percent.
