Ransomware the most pervasive threat to US critical infrastructure in 2024, says FBI

“Last year saw a new record for losses reported to IC3, totaling a staggering $16.6 billion,” the report said. Fraud represented the bulk of reported losses in 2024.

The leading complaint was phishing/spoofing (193,407 complaints), followed by extortion (just over 86,000), and personal data breach (just over 64,800). Business email compromise scams, for example, where a scammer pretends to be a business partner of a firm and asks that the firm change the bank account to which it sends payments to one under the scammer’s control, ranked seventh, just below tech support scams.

Ransomware ranked way below, with 3,156 complaints and an estimated $12.473 million in losses, compared to over $2 billion in business email compromise losses and $70 million in phishing/spoofing losses.