Revealed: The countries with the highest levels of cybercrime in the world – and Britain is just one place behind North Korea!

Russia has been named as the world’s cybercrime hotspot in a new study that ranks the top sources of cybercrime threats.

The World Cybercrime Index has been published after three years of research by academics from the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra.

According to the index, Russia tops the list as the location with the greatest cybercrime threat.

This is followed by Ukraine, China, the US and Nigeria.

Meanwhile, Britain is eighth on the list – just one place behind North Korea.

The rankings were based on data collected by the researchers, where they surveyed nearly 100 cybercrime experts from around the world.

The experts were asked to identify the top sources of five major types of cybercrime, ranking countries based on the impact, professionalism and technical skills of the criminals.

The study’s co-author, Dr Miranda Bruce, said the research would allow cyber security agencies to focus on key cybercrime hubs, allowing funds to be deployed and concentrated more effectively.

“The research underlying the index will help lift the veil of anonymity around cybercriminals, and we hope it will support the fight against the growing threat of profit-driven cybercrime,” she said.

‘We now have a better understanding of the geography of cybercrime and how different countries specialize in different types of cybercrime.

The rankings were based on data collected by the researchers, where they surveyed nearly 100 cybercrime experts from around the world (stock image)

“Continuing to collect this data will allow us to monitor the emergence of new hotspots and enable early intervention in high-risk countries before a serious cybercrime problem even arises.”

Fellow co-author Associate Professor Jonathan Lusthaus said the index could help shed light on what is often difficult to track activity.

‘Due to the illegal and anonymous nature of their activities, cybercriminals are not easily accessible or reliably interrogated. They are actively hiding,” he said.

“If you try to use technical data to map their location, you will also fail, because cybercriminals bounce their attacks around the Internet infrastructure around the world.

“The best tool we have to get a sense of where these perpetrators are actually located is to investigate those whose job it is to track these people down.”

The researchers said they hope to expand the study to investigate whether different national characteristics, such as education rates, GDP or corruption levels, influence the amount of cybercrime that arises in a country.

The World Cybercrime Index is published in the journal Plos One.