The U.S. is the fourth leading purveyor of cybercrime around the world, only behind Russia, Ukraine, and China, based on the World Cybercrime Index compiled by UK and Australian researchers published in the journal PLOS One, Newsweek reports.
Such ranking — which was determined through a poll of cybercrime experts around the world regarding the pervasiveness of five major cybercrime categories across different countries and the skillset of their respective cybercriminals — may have been brought upon by the dominance of the U.S. in the "cashing out/money laundering" category, according to study co-author Jonathan Lusthaus of the University of Oxford.
Meanwhile, cybercrime was noted by Michigan State University's Thomas Holt, who was not involved in the study, to be prevalent in the U.S. due to limited regulations, extensive range of attractive targets, and elevated technological access.
"There is sufficient evidence to tell us that the U.S. experiences a lot of financial crimes – data breaches, hacking, fraud – as well as a range of person-based offenses with particular emphasis on child sexual exploitation crimes as they are currently one of the only cybercrimes that are captured well in police data," Holt said.
