Why Are Hackers Flooding Into Brazil? Jordan Robertson - Bloomberg News
go to original September 22, 2013

View of hundreds of tents with accommodations for 6,000 people during the Campus Party event, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Jan. 30, 2013. About 8,000 hackers, developers and geeks were expected to attend the annual week-long, 24-hour-a-day technology event.  (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images)

The answer, to channel notorious bank robber Willie Sutton: Because that’s where the money is.

In recent years, Brazil has become a major source of malware that steals online banking passwords, a development that may surprise you given the attention paid to attacks originating in Eastern Europe and Asia.

To understand why Brazil is a magnet for hackers, it helps to consider the country’s long history in electronic banking, according to a report by Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm.

For decades, Brazil’s banks have been on the forefront of online finance, pioneering electronic systems in the 1980s to help speed transaction times and stabilize a troubled economy, Trend Micro said. The country is now home to the world’s second-largest ATM market, according to the report.

It’s also home to surging cybercrime. Brazil’s large online population – 88.5 million people, or more than 40 percent of the population – makes for a big target. And $1.4 billion was lost in the country in 2012 to electronic fraud, according to the Brazilian Federation of Banks, which also said a wave of successful heists is likely to push the total higher this year.

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