Rise of Computer-Related Crimes: Loss of Data, Infrastructures, and Monetary Assets

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in computer-related crimes that have caused loss of data, damage to infrastructure, and monetary loss. This paper intends to analyze the extent of the losses and other damage using the data extracted from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reports, ranging from the years 2020 to 2024, and to analyze trends in financial losses, mostly because of a wide range of internet crimes. Additionally, this paper recognizes the pattern of reported losses and calculates the expected values for the future years of 2025 and 2026. Losses reported on the IC3 increased significantly from $4.2 billion in 2020 to a staggering amount of $16.6 billion in 2024 and are predicted to keep increasing in future years. To ascertain the potential losses, time series forecasting is conducted on the data mostly provided in the IC3. Due to the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) related applications, AI-driven attacks are on the horizon, the proliferation of dark web tools, and increased global interconnectedness mean that the scale, speed, and cost of cybercrime continue to accelerate, necessitating significant investment in cybersecurity measures and resilience. Computer-related crimes are escalating rapidly, resulting in massive losses of data, severe damage to infrastructures, and staggering monetary assets. The global cost of cybercrime is projected to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, growing by 15% each year, according to some estimates. These findings alert the public to be aware of severity of this dire situation they could face and to harden their software and take possible preventative measures to minimize the losses.