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In cyberfriendly Asia, online crime dominates underworld: Interpol survey

Illegal cyber activities accounted for around a third of all crimes recorded in some Asian countries, with scams the most widespread and financially damaging, according…

By Samantha Johnson / June 17, 2026
Illegal cyber activities accounted for around a third of all crimes recorded in some Asian countries, with scams the most widespread and financially damaging, according to a new Interpol report.

The global policing agency’s latest cyber threat assessment cited the increasing dominance of online crimes compared to traditional illicit activity, describing the activities as “persistent, large-scale challenges affecting multiple jurisdictions” linked to the rapid adoption of digital infrastructure.

Of the 18 Interpol member states in Asia and South Pacific that responded to a survey, more than half reported that cybercrime made up 30 per cent of all crimes recorded nationally. Around a third reported more than 10,000 cases of online scams using techniques such as phishing.

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Interpol did not publicly list the countries that responded to their survey, which was carried out between January 2024 and March 2025.

“The findings in this report highlight a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape across Asia and the South Pacific, where cybercriminals are leveraging artificial intelligence, ransomware-as-a-service models and sophisticated social engineering techniques on an industrial scale,” Neal Jetton, who oversees the Cybercrime Directorate at Interpol in Singapore, said in a statement.

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The report comes as governments across Asia are grappling with an explosion in online fraud fuelled by sprawling scam networks that monitoring groups say increasingly operate across borders and generate tens of billions of dollars a year.

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