Losses from computer crime have more than doubled in the last 12 months, according to the annual Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey report, which was released today.

The huge losses, around AU$11.8 million over the 214 organisations surveyed, have stemmed primarily from financial fraud (AU$3.52 million), laptop theft (AU$2.25 million), virus, worm and trojan infection (AU$2.23 million), and insider abuse of resources (AU$1.27 million).

The survey was conducted by the Australian Federal Police, the Western Australian, Queensland and South Australian police forces, the Attorney General's department and AusCERT, the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team.

The organisers surveyed a sample of organisations across 22 industry sectors, with the number of employees of the surveyed groups ranging from 1-99, to 10,000+.

If the report is a reliable indicator, external attacks against computer networks are becoming a more common.

"Of those who experienced attacks which harmed data confidentiality, integrity or availability, 91 percent experienced externally-sourced attacks and 36 percent experienced internally-sourced attacks," the report said.

Fifty-one percent of organisations surveyed believed the most common suspected motive for a computer based attack they had experienced was found to be "indiscriminate"--an attacker had simply found a flaw and exploited it. Other big motivations included using system resources for personal use (41 percent), a demonstration of attacker skill (40 percent), and malicious damage (34 percent).

Attacks motivated by illicit financial gain were experienced by 18 percent of respondents.

Laptop theft remained the biggest cost to respondents, with 71 percent claiming to have lost money this way. Virus, worm, and trojan infection was the next most common source of loss, but the most common type of incident.

The number of respondents that experienced laptop theft was up 21 percent on the last survey.

Financial fraud was this year's big winner though, stealing the 'top money' spot from laptop theft. Respondents' total losses from financial fraud topped AU$3.5 million.

The survey was released today at the AusCERT security conference on the Gold Coast, which is being attended by around 500 delegates.

A strategic alliance between University of Queensland-based AusCERT and the Queensland University of Technology based Information Security Research Centre (ISRC) was announced last night prior to the commencement of the conference today.

According to ISRC director Professor Ed Dawson the new alliance will lead to the support of AusCERT in areas such as incident response and intrusion forensics.

"Such cooperation will further develop Australia's capabilities in detecting and responding to increased threats to the national information infrastructure, an underlying base for critical infrastructure protection". he said.

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