Everybody wants to be a hacker: Data suggests unprecedented interest in cybercrime during pandemic

[HempBoosh]

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With unemployment rates skyrocketing across the world as prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns continue to wreck the global economy, people who are forced to stay at home without a source of income are beginning to learn new skills to sustain themselves.

Our research discovered that while millions are simply trying to make themselves more employable in the digital job market by signing up for online courses, others appear to be increasingly looking at cybercrime as a potential source of income. Recent data has indicated that during the months of March, April, and May, searches related to hacking, scamming, and other forms of cybercrime were through the roof, with breakout search terms like “hacking course” and “ethical hacking course” reaching all-time highs. Moreover, visits to popular hacker websites and forums increased by up to 66% in March.

However, it seems that this might be just the beginning, which suggests an even more increased interest in becoming a cybercriminal in the near future. While the overall number of people affected by cybercrime is steadily growing every year, 2020 might prove to be the year when the ranks of cybercriminals spike exponentially due to the economic downturns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

What we found out

This is what we found after analyzing cybercrime-related search terms on Google Trends and looking at popular hacker website traffic on SimilarWeb in the period from late March to May 2020:

• Out of 15 cybercrime-related search terms we looked at, two are experiencing all-time highs, 5 have reached five-year highs, while 8 search terms have hit twelve-month highs

• According to SimilarWeb, traffic to popular hacker websites surged noticeably in March and April 2020

• The surges in searches and traffic seem to roughly correlate with the introduction of lockdowns in countries across the world, beginning in late March, gaining steam in April, and peaking around late April and early May

• As COVID-19 lockdowns continue to cause damage to national economies, interest in learning cybercrime so far does not seem to wane significantly

Additionally, with the numbers of hacking-related searches reaching their highest levels in years and even decades, a new, massive wave of cybercrime might be in the making later this year.

Record-breaking spikes in cybercrime-related searches

We used Google Trends to see if there was a noticeable spike in interest in cybercrime-related topics during the pandemic. We were mainly looking at search terms related to learning hacking, online scamming, and the dark web.

Out of all the keywords we’ve analyzed, searches for “hacking course” and “ethical hacking course” have spiked the most, with both search terms reaching their all-time highs on Google Trends and possibly indicating the surge of increased interest in learning cybercrime.

 

 

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Online hacker communities experiencing increased traffic

Apart from analyzing Google Trends data, we also used SimilarWeb’s Traffic Overview feature to look at rough estimations of traffic coming to popular online hacker communities.

What we saw confirmed our suspicions: while visits to several popular hacker websites and forums were down by 15%-23% from January to February, March traffic was up by 8%-66%. That said, April saw fewer spikes as traffic stabilized, with some websites experiencing decreases in traffic compared to March. However, the gains from February were still maintained on most websites in April.

The noticeable upticks for most popular websites roughly correlate with the unprecedented spikes in searches on Google Trends. While correlation does not necessarily imply causation, increases in criminal activities often tend to go hand in hand with worsening economic conditions [pdf].

 

 

Source: https://cybernews.com/security/data-suggests-unprecedented-interest-in-cybercrime-during-pandemic/

This isn't that surprising, considering that unemployment soared this year. Though I'm hoping that most people are interested in white hat hacking, as there is plenty of money to be made there as well. 

[r2724r16]

Not surprised considering the amount of extra time people have on their hands.

[TVwazhere]

@HempBoosh please update the op per the Tech News Posting guidelines, else it will be subject to being moved out of Tech News.

 

 

On 4/29/2013 at 3:09 AM, Windspeed36 said:

• Your thread should also include quotes from the cited source(s). While you shouldn't just copy the entire article, your quote should give the reader a summary of the article in a way that gives the key details, but also leaves room for them to read the full article on the linked website. Please use quote tags to show that you have copied this content from another site.

 

[Doobeedoo]

So I have Kali Linux on one laptop.. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

6 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

So I have Kali Linux on one laptop.. 

tools like Kali have legitimate uses.... people always forget that. almost all tools hackers use have legitimate uses outside of hacking.

[Tech_Dreamer]

last time when there was a survey like this sort , iircc most of the young people wanted to be a YouTuber or live streamer or something.

[Bombastinator]

Gah.  More problems.  We got too many already.

[williamcll]

Anonymous having a fun time right now.

[ouroesa]

These numbers are fairly useless without context. I think people just have more time in general and spend more time searching things and doing online courses. How do these numbers correlate to general searches or other non-hacking related online courses? I would not be surprised if it just followed the trend of a general uptic of internet usage during these times. 

I did a quick comparison between "hacking tutorial", "learn hacking" and "tutorial"  wolrdwide, 2004-present which demonstrates my point.

[MyName13]

Does anyone here have any tips for getting into information security industry?

[JuztBe]

7 hours ago, Caroline said:

searching for hacking courses on google is like going to the police station and asking if they know which bank has the least security so you can rob it

Have to start somewhere 

[Maticks]

everyone wants to be Sandra Bullock.... haha

[BuckGup]

This is actually a good thing. Many won't become anything, a skiddy at best, but it will allow them to see how insecure many systems are in place and hopefully educate them on better practices. 

[Guest]

Going to be terrible with all the old people staying at home using more tech to keep in touch with their loved ones.

[wamred]

On 6/2/2020 at 9:11 AM, HempBoosh said:

 

 

Source: https://cybernews.com/security/data-suggests-unprecedented-interest-in-cybercrime-during-pandemic/

This isn't that surprising, considering that unemployment soared this year. Though I'm hoping that most people are interested in white hat hacking, as there is plenty of money to be made there as well. 

This is actually terrifying.

[captain_to_fire]

On 6/2/2020 at 9:11 PM, HempBoosh said:

Though I'm hoping that most people are interested in white hat hacking, as there is plenty of money to be made there as well. 

I wouldn't be surprised if there would be an increase in white hat or even gray hat hackers for penetration testing. For one, pay outs just got more lucrative. Just recently, Apple awarded $100K to a 27-year old security researcher because of a "Sign With Apple" vulnerability. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/06/apple-fixes-bug-that-could-have-given-hackers-unauthorized-to-user-accounts/

[HumdrumPenguin]

The amount of people being caught trying some illegal s*** will grow exponentially. These people have no idea what they are in for.

[Bombastinator]

8 minutes ago, HumdrumPenguin said:

The amount of people being caught trying some illegal s*** will grow exponentially. These people have no idea what they are in for.

The penalties for cybercrime are not funny.  Considering the problems the world has right now I have little sympathy.  We’re sort of hanging by a thread at the moment and that thread is the internet. 
 

I can see some barely competent ass thinking “I’ll break the thing and people will pay me money to stop” not thinking how many people it will kill.   Lives depend on internet comms at the moment. 
 

Someone who does that isn’t just going to go to prison, they’re going to get torn apart by a mob, and who can fix what they did once they’re dead?  Atm the internet going down imho could be considered the biblical “great darkness”

[X-System]

22 hours ago, Maticks said:

everyone wants to be Sandra Bullock.... haha

Or Angelina Jolie

 

[Tan3l6]

Everybody Wants to Rule the World!

 

 

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Everybody Wants to Rule the World!

Proof:

 

Not everybody.  Only the fools.  Enough though.

[HempBoosh]

11 hours ago, wamred said:

This is actually terrifying.

How so? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd rather people do ethical hacking and earn a few bucks out of it. I don't want more scammers and people leaking my personal data against my will. And companies will be less vulnerable if there more eyes on their products from a technical perspective.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, HempBoosh said:

How so? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd rather people do ethical hacking and earn a few bucks out of it. I don't want more scammers and people leaking my personal data against my will. And companies will be less vulnerable if there more eyes on their products from a technical perspective.

Ethical hacking I don’t have a problem with per se.  it’s the unethical stuff that is potentially incredibly destructive.  The internet is a complex and fragile system and the hunan race is relying on it atm as never before.  Some ass poking holes in it could become a mass murderer without even meaning to.   A lot of data breaches and stuff come from people thinking “I’m not actually hurting anyone” but they are.  It’s knockdown effect.  They may cause divorces and suicides and who knows what else.  Not having to see something happen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

[Drama Lama]

Looks like all the thieves who can’t work because everybody is staying at home try to switch jobs ( actually not really instead of stealing furniture cash or other stuff now they are stealing data )

[Kilrah]

I didn't search for it but I happened to randomly find out about the LiveOverflow YT channel 2 months ago and have been binge-watching quite a few dozen videos

Always been interested in infosec but hadn't yet found a lead that worked for me and was fun to follow.