As cyber attacks targeting the government and corporations are rapidly increasing, the estimated damage caused by cybercrime worldwide this year reaches 460 million won per second.
According to a regular report from the Institute of Information and Communications Planning and Evaluation (IITP) on the 17th, the cybersecurity firm Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global losses from cybercrime this year will approach $10.5 trillion (approximately 1.47 trillion won). It is projected that losses related to cybercrime will increase by an average of 2.5% per year.
This year, the scale of damage from cybercrime is recorded at $333,000 (approximately 460 million won) per second.
When the cybercrime industry is converted to the size of a single national economy, it was estimated to rank as the third-largest economy in the world, after the United States ($30) and China ($19.2 trillion).
The report noted, "As artificial intelligence (AI) technology is utilized in cyber attacks, perfect localization and scripted-based automated attacks are making it difficult to track crimes." Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike reported that AI-based voice phishing attacks surged by 442% in the second half of last year compared to the first half.
In a survey conducted by another cybersecurity company, Darktrace, involving 1,500 security professionals from 14 countries, 73.6% responded that AI-based cyber threats are already having a significant impact on their organizations, and 89.7% expect such threats to have serious impacts within the next 1 to 2 years.
Attackers are carrying out attacks targeting the AI systems themselves, such as damaging machine learning models and manipulating training data, while also automating and scaling up cyber attacks through AI.
The report suggested, "As the scale of global cybercrime damage increases, proactive strategies are needed for Korea to secure leadership in AI security technology and strengthen national-level resilience."