Abstract:
According to Grabosky et al 'the fundamental principle of criminology is that crime follows
opportunity, and the opportunities for theft abound in the Digital Age '. But what is the extent
of this opportunity? There are numerous hacker toolkits readily available from the Internet
that exploits security weaknesses in target systems. This paper presents the results of a 1%
year survey of websites that tested for such weaknesses. The author examined popular
'hacker' toolkits and assembled a data collection toolkit that tested for 70 exploits. Whilst
some 2 million websites were targeted across the 57 most populous domains, 748,000 are
reported. Of these, 77% displayed susceptibility to at least one exploit. Whilst this indicates
significant opportunity, it also demonstrates the lack of capable guardianship by system
owners and those tasked with protecting cyberspace. The facts that ISP's fail to collect
identification details and allows bulk system scanning are factors that facilitate the
commission of cybercrime.
