{
  "id": 16344777,
  "title": "Why are cybersecurity losses not worse?",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/24/why-are-cybersecurity-losses-not-worse",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-10-24T15:57:10.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Marginal Revolution",
    "slug": "marginal-revolution",
    "url": "https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/10/why-are-cybersecurity-losses-not-worse.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Cybersecurity losses are not as severe as many might imagine due to several factors. Cybercriminals are not the highly skilled geniuses people often assume they are. Instead, building a criminal gang involves finding individuals who are willing to abandon more stable jobs in the formal economy. Modeling suggests there are around 720,000 people involved in the online criminal economy, with 90% of them engaged in scam and fraud call-center operations, some of which may involve human trafficking. The remaining 76,000 hackers are largely employed by governments, while a few thousand focus on ransomware attacks.\n\nFor these criminal organizations to operate, they typically base themselves in middle and lower-income countries where they can pay lower wages and hire individuals with fewer options in the formal economy. An example of this would be an illegal call center setup in a small city in Nigeria for scams and fraud, or kids working in the informal economy in Belarus for ransomware groups.\n\nThe demographic of cybercriminals is often perceived by those in AI safety and cybersecurity as highly skilled adversaries, much like Waluigi twins with MIT degrees. However, the reality is that cybercriminals typically come from a lower-skill demographic. The chart presented in the article estimates attacker wages relative to the wages of the default economy, providing further insight into this phenomenon.",
  "summary": "Here’s the first part of my theory: cybercriminals are not the organized geniuses we implicitly imagine. Anyone building a criminal gang has to find candidates willing to forgo more stable opportunities in the formal economy. My modeling estimated that something like 720,000 people are involved in the online criminal economy, 90% of them in scam […] The post Why are cybersecurity losses not…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}