The IC3, or Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI, has released their yearly report, showing a 10% rise in the number of reported cybercrimes compared to the previous year.
The FBI received over 880,000 complaints from cybercrime victims in the United States, resulting in reported losses of over $12.5 billion. This marks a 22% rise from the previous year.
In the last five years, the law enforcement agency has received approximately 3.8 million reports of losses amounting to a total of $37.4 billion.
According to the image provided, phishing remains the top source of complaints, with personal data breaches, scams related to non-payment or non-delivery, extortion, and tech support following behind at a considerable distance.
Investment fraud was the most expensive type of fraud, resulting in losses of $4.57 billion, an increase from $3.31 billion last year. The second most costly was business email compromise (BEC), with victims reporting a total loss of $2.9 billion.
Instances of tech support scams, personal data breaches, confidence and romance scams, government impersonation, and non-payment/non-delivery schemes have collectively led to losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
The FBI has reported receiving over 2,800 complaints related to ransomware, resulting in a total loss of almost $60 million. The sectors that were most frequently targeted include healthcare, critical manufacturing, government facilities, IT, and financial services.
According to the FBI, a total of 1,193 complaints were reported by critical infrastructure sector organizations that were targeted by ransomware attacks. The IC3 received reports from 14 out of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors, indicating that at least one member from each sector was impacted by a ransomware attack in previous year
The most prominent ransomware gangs, LockBit and BlackCat, were recently the focus of global law enforcement actions, according to reports from SecurityWeek.
According to the IC3, they have a success rate of over 70% in recovering funds lost through fraudulent transfers to domestic accounts. The agency also reported that they were able to freeze $538 million out of the total $758 million reported losses.
