{"id":439255,"date":"2011-06-10T10:24:33","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/06\/10\/hi-tech-crime-estimates-biased\/"},"modified":"2011-06-10T10:24:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:24:33","slug":"hi-tech-crime-estimates-biased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/06\/10\/hi-tech-crime-estimates-biased\/","title":{"rendered":"Hi-tech crime estimates ‘biased’"},"content":{"rendered":"

10 June 2011<\/span> Last updated at<\/span> 06:24 ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Surveys of cyber crime and numbers of sexual partners have a lot in common, researchers have suggested.<\/p>\n

Both are self-reporting, uncorroborated surveys that are subject to “catastrophic errors”, according to analysis by a Microsoft research team.<\/p>\n

Over-reporting by a small number of survey subjects can wildly skew final estimates.<\/p>\n

As a result, they said, no faith should be placed in the evidence these surveys claim to have uncovered.<\/p>\n

Body count<\/span><\/p>\n

There were deep similarities between surveys that try to get a snapshot of hi-tech crime and those that peep into human sexual relations, said Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley in a paper entitled Sex, Lies and Cyber Crime Surveys<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Typically these surveys build up their totals from self-reported estimates because both phenomena defy “large-scale direct observation”.<\/p>\n

In the case of sexual partner surveys, such self-reporting produces totals which suggest that men have had far more female sexual partners than women have had male sexual partners. This, according to the researchers, “is impossible”.<\/p>\n

The truth is that in these surveys men over-report partner numbers and women under-report. Plus, said the researchers, some men tell “whopping” lies about their sexual lives and, as a result, vastly inflate the final results.<\/p>\n

The same is true of cyber crime surveys, in that respondents tend to over-report. Also some wildly overestimate the financial loss they suffered or the time it took to resolve problems caused by theft of login details, credit card numbers or other valuable data.<\/p>\n

Mathematical analysis of the surveys shows that it only takes a few large overestimates to produce a total that bears little relation to the facts.<\/p>\n

“Our assessment of the quality of cyber crime surveys is harsh,” wrote the researchers. “They are so compromised and biased that no faith whatever can be placed in their findings.”<\/p>\n

David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs, said he was always “sceptical” about figures that tried to quantify cyber crime.<\/p>\n

“It’s by definition a covert economy,” he said, “cyber criminals don’t publish annual accounts.”<\/p>\n

But, he said, it was not necessary to produce a global market estimate to be sure it was a big problem.<\/p>\n

“Look at the reports in online media of arrests of cyber criminals and the figures cited for what the criminals would have ‘earned’ had they been successful,” he said.<\/p>\n

“These are real figures,” he added. “Given that this is just the tip of a much larger iceberg, it’s clear that it’s a lucrative business.”<\/p>\n

The Sex Lies and Cyber Crime surveys<\/a> paper is due to be presented at the forthcoming Workshop on the Economics of Information Security.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

Link:
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