A Quarter of Global Internet Bandwidth Is Consumed on Pirated Content

Despite the efforts of groups like RIAA and MPAA, piracy doesn't seem to go away or even slow down in any form, but actually, according to the State of Application Security Report 2015, it's grown 22% compared to 2014.

While between 2012 and 2014 around 1.6 million pirated assets were recorded on a yearly basis, in 2015, this number is expected to reach 1.96 million, as Arxan Technologies and iThreat Cyber Group have concluded in their most recent report.

Their research has uncovered how it only takes about 33 minutes for a torrent file to reach over 100,000 users, quickly moving through the various stages of a release, from shady scene sites, to FTP top sites, to private torrent sites, to public sites, and then cyber-lockers.

Taking into account the total traffic they generate, the study concludes that moving pirated material online is currently accounting for 23.76% of the global Internet bandwidth, almost a quarter of all Internet traffic.

Companies lost $837 billion / €758 billion to pirated content in 2014

If users had paid for the content they pirated last year, companies would have been richer with $837 billion / €758 billion, of which a staggering $652 billion / €590 billion would be for computer and mobile software.

After the software category, the gaming and the movie industry would be the most affected with $74 billion / €67 billion and $73 billion / €66 billion, followed by the TV industry with $18 billion / €16 billion, the music industry with $12 billion / €11 billion, and finally the adult sector with $6 billion / €5.4 billion.

The researchers, together with Tru Optik, have assigned a value to the pirated content exchanged on P2P networks, and have concluded that the biggest piracy-related damages have been done by users from Brazil. They are closely followed by users from Russia, India, Italy, USA, Poland, Turkey, Romania, Thailand, and Serbia.

Android apps are the favorite targets for software pirates

Most of the pirated software between January 2012 and March 2015 comes in the form of Android apps (41%), followed by software key generators (17%), Apple software (13%), Windows software (9%), and iOS apps (5%).

The high number of Android apps in Arxan's report is due to the fact that 97% of all Android lack the proper protection, making them an attractive target for pirates.

Additionally, one in two organizations doesn't even have a budget allocated for ensuring mobile app security, which exposes their software not only to pirates but also to malicious actors.

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