KUALA LUMPUR, May 17- Malaysia is the 6th most vulnerable country in the world for cyber crime, in the form of malware attacks, through the computer or smartphone.
CyberSecurity Malaysia Research vice president Lt Col (R) Sazali Sukardi said the Sophos Security Threat Report 2013 found, in a period of three months this year, that besides Malaysia, nine other countries, Hong Kong, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, India, Philippines, Thailand, China and Indonesia were also highly at risk.
“Cyber thieves have stolen about RM331.7 billion worldwide, at an average of RM593 per victim based on the Norton Cyber Crime Report 2012,” he said, while presenting a working paper entitled “Collaboration and cooperation in the fight against cyber crime” at a two-day e-Crime conference, here, today.
However, cyber crime in the country has decreased from 15,218 cases in 2011 to 9,986 cases in 2012, he said.
He attributed the drop to effective enforcement by the government enforcement agencies, including CyberSecurity.
According to Sazali, the highest reported cyber crime was fraud, followed by cyber invasion attempts, Spam, denial of service, content-related offences, malicious code and cyber defamation.
“We are also facing security threats from international criminal organisations that abused the internet for various cross-border illegal activities such as drugs, human trafficking, financial fraud and money laundering,” he said.
He urged the public to contact CyberSecurity at its helpline Cyber999 through 03-89926969 to provide information or lodge a public complaint.
– BERNAMA
