Top Stories
In an evil internet minute, $1,138,888 is lost to cybercrime, reveals RiskIQ
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on August 22, 2018
4 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
With cybercriminals costing the global economy $600 billion last year alone, global digital threat management leader RiskIQ tapped proprietary and third-party research to examine the growing volume of malicious activity on the internet to reveal the latest ‘Evil Internet Minute.’
The data shows that in a single evil internet minute, $1,138,888 is lost to cybercrime, and 1,861 people fall victim. Despite businesses’ best efforts to guard against external cyber threats, spending up to $171,233 in 60 seconds, attackers continue to proliferate and launch successful campaigns online.
“As the internet and its community continue to grow at a rapid pace, the threat landscape targeting it grows at scale as well,” said RiskIQ CEO Elias Manousos. “We made the vast numbers associated with it more accessible by framing them in the context of an ‘internet minute’. Leveraging the latest research as well as our own global threat intelligence, we’re defining the sheer scale of attacks that take place across the internet to help businesses better understand what they’re up against on the open web.”
Attacker tactics range from malware to phishing to supply chain attacks targeting third-parties. Their motives include monetary gain, large-scale reputational damage, politics, and espionage. Cybercriminals continue to find success in a range of tactics including launching 1,274 pieces of unique malware and deploying more than nine malvertisements each evil internet minute.
RiskIQ’s research has also uncovered additional malicious activity each minute, ranging from blacklisted mobile apps to malvertising:
- 1.5 organisations fell victim to ransomware attacks every minute with an average cost to businesses of $15,221
- .17 blacklisted mobile apps
- .21 new phishing domains
- .07 incidents of the Magecart credit card skimmer
- .1 new sites running the CoinHive cryptocurrency mining script
- 4 potentially vulnerable web components discovered
“As companies innovate online to make more meaningful touchpoints with their customers, partners, and employees, attackers prey on their lack of visibility into their internet-facing attack surface to erode users’ trust and access credentials and sensitive data,” Manousos said. “Businesses must realise that they are vulnerable beyond the firewall, all the way across the open internet.”
To view RiskIQ’s Evil Internet Minute infographic, please click here: https://www.riskiq.com/infographic/evil-internet-minute-2018/
With cybercriminals costing the global economy $600 billion last year alone, global digital threat management leader RiskIQ tapped proprietary and third-party research to examine the growing volume of malicious activity on the internet to reveal the latest ‘Evil Internet Minute.’
The data shows that in a single evil internet minute, $1,138,888 is lost to cybercrime, and 1,861 people fall victim. Despite businesses’ best efforts to guard against external cyber threats, spending up to $171,233 in 60 seconds, attackers continue to proliferate and launch successful campaigns online.
“As the internet and its community continue to grow at a rapid pace, the threat landscape targeting it grows at scale as well,” said RiskIQ CEO Elias Manousos. “We made the vast numbers associated with it more accessible by framing them in the context of an ‘internet minute’. Leveraging the latest research as well as our own global threat intelligence, we’re defining the sheer scale of attacks that take place across the internet to help businesses better understand what they’re up against on the open web.”
Attacker tactics range from malware to phishing to supply chain attacks targeting third-parties. Their motives include monetary gain, large-scale reputational damage, politics, and espionage. Cybercriminals continue to find success in a range of tactics including launching 1,274 pieces of unique malware and deploying more than nine malvertisements each evil internet minute.
RiskIQ’s research has also uncovered additional malicious activity each minute, ranging from blacklisted mobile apps to malvertising:
- 1.5 organisations fell victim to ransomware attacks every minute with an average cost to businesses of $15,221
- .17 blacklisted mobile apps
- .21 new phishing domains
- .07 incidents of the Magecart credit card skimmer
- .1 new sites running the CoinHive cryptocurrency mining script
- 4 potentially vulnerable web components discovered
“As companies innovate online to make more meaningful touchpoints with their customers, partners, and employees, attackers prey on their lack of visibility into their internet-facing attack surface to erode users’ trust and access credentials and sensitive data,” Manousos said. “Businesses must realise that they are vulnerable beyond the firewall, all the way across the open internet.”
To view RiskIQ’s Evil Internet Minute infographic, please click here: https://www.riskiq.com/infographic/evil-internet-minute-2018/
