Ministry of Internal Affairs: cybercrime stopped in Russia

Cybercrime growth stopped in Russia, - the head of Ministry's technical operations buro Boris Miroshnikov declared yesterday. He reports 14,000 crimes in hi-tech within 2006, the same number within 2005. "I may state the growth of computer crime stopped in our country", concluded Boris Miroshnikov. It is also reported that more than a half of those cases were about "illegal access to computer data" law, which mostly means personal data from bank accounts.

"The statistics doesn't meet reality", claimed Informzashchita deputy director Maxim Amm, "Actually, the least percent of cyber attacks have been tracked". He advised to consider those figures with scepticism. Experts deny objectivity of Ministry figures for few reasons. According to Infowatch marketing director Denis Zenkin, Russian companies hide 90-95% of such cases because of reputational concerns. On the other hand it has become more difficult to track such crimes considering the growth of hackers' skill. Besides, the number of attacks rises in proportion with Internet growth, according to Cisco's business development manager Alexei Lukatsky. He also explained mentioning US practice that Internet expansion along with tougher cybercrime treatment impacts hackers' effectiveness.