KUALA LUMPUR: 130 per cent increase in Internet crimes
iStock Analyst (12 Oct 2011)

Source: Malay Mail)trackingIN the first nine months of this year, 11,930 cases of cyber crimes have been reported to CyberSecurity Malaysia, marking a whopping 130 per cent increase from the same period last year.

"The sharp rise in the number of reports on cyber crimes is due to the increasing number of Internet users here and greater public awareness of our hotline," said CyberSecurity Malaysia chief executive officer Lt Col (Rtd) Prof Datuk Husin Jazri, one of the speakers at the Child Online Protection Seminar held yesterday.

"The top cyber crimes here are fraud, spam, intrusion, malicious code, cyber harassment, vulnerabilities report, denialof- service attacks and contentrelated attacks." Husin said according to the latest data up to the first quarter of this year, 61.18 per cent of Malaysia's population of 28.6 million are Internet users.

"Nowadays, out of four emails received by an Internet user on a daily average, one email is likely to be fraudulent," he said.

"Of the 11,930 cases up to September this year, fraud makes up the biggest number at 4,175 cases." Next two highest are spam (3,452 cases) and intrusion (2,345 cases).

"Last year, there were 354 cases involving cyber harassment, and happily none were perpetuated by children," said Husin.

"Still, we are glad to be working together with the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry to educate parents and children to stop children being victimised by cyber criminals while surfing the Internet." Husin urged those victimised by cyber crimes to email cyber999@cybersecurity.