The US and China are behind nearly 40 per cent of global hacking

ASSURANCE FIRM NCC Group has released a report on the global distribution and cost of cyber attacks.

The firm's data show that the US and China top the hacking charts, accounting for 38.3 per cent of the world's hacking attempts and costing the global economy more than $43 billion each year. The UK ranks in 15th place, making up just 1.7 per cent of global hacks.

Rob Cotton, CEO of NCC Group said, "Reading the papers each day, it's easy to think of hacking as something that happens to us from afar; that we're victims of foreign criminal gangs in developing countries. Yet hackers can be anywhere in the world, as our research illustrates, including on our own doorstep."

Half of the top 10 countries were found in Western Europe, with Italy, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Germany ranking fifth to ninth. These five account for nearly 200 million attempted hacking attacks, or 14.7 per cent, costing the global economy $16 billion.

Russia comes in behind the US and China in third, with 3.6 per cent of attacks and a cost of more than $4 billion. India rounds out the top 10 with 1.9 per cent of hacking attempts and a global cost of more than $2 million.

"Fighting this global threat will only work with global collaboration. We hear lots about governments wanting to work together and there's a strong financial motivation to find this long-suggested global solution but progress is painfully slow," added Cotton. µ