"The use of proxy servers is a notable feature of child abuse material distribution. While an increasing amount of non-commercial material is produced and distributed, commercial production and distribution persists, particularly in the Former Soviet Union. A recent development of note is the use of malicious software to hijack web servers for the purpose of commercial distribution."

Further, the rise of a "sophisticated and self-sufficient digital underground economy" where stolen personal and financial information had a tangible monetary value for criminal organisations.

"This drives a range of new criminal activities, such as phishing, pharming, malware distribution and the hacking of corporate databases, with a fully fledged infrastructure of malicious code writers, specialist web hosts and individuals able to lease networks of many thousands of compromised computers (botnets) to carry out automated attacks," the report reads.

"As this economy has grown in sophistication, mature technical service providers such as payment card verification number generators and illicit data brokers have emerged."

Security company McAfee puts . There are more than 150,000 viruses in circulation and around 148,000 computers are compromised each day.