A report has pegged the value of the underground Internet economy, which deals in fraud and stolen goods, at more than $276 million for the period between July 2007 and June 2008.

Published by Symantec Corp, the online security software maker, the report said frequently advertised ''merchandise'' in the underground market included stolen credit card information, and access to bank accounts worth up to $1.7 billion.

The report said that the market is made up of more than 69,000 advertisers, and over 44 million messages were posted to online forums during the period. Symantec said that an "online underground economy that has matured into an efficient, global marketplace in which stolen goods and fraud-related services are regularly bought and sold."

Shedding further light on the illegal trades online, the report said that North America hosted the highest number of servers used for underground economic activity during the period, which amounts to 45 per cent of the total. Europe, the Middle East and Africa together account for another 38 per cent of the world's illegal servers. Asia Pacific accounted for 12 per cent and Latin America for five per cent.

Symantec report was drawn from data collected by the company by observing participating servers via its Security Technology and Response organisation. It reported that stolen credit card information sold for as little as 10 cents per card, while the potential worth of all stolen credit card information advertised during the period was around $5.3 billion. It says credit card information is a popular item, on account of it being easy to use for online purchases, and the merchants' relative inability to identify suspect transactions before they're completed and goods have been received. Credit card information accounted for 31 per cent of the illegal trade, selling from anywhere between $0.10 to $25 per card, though it translated into much higher dollar values as the average advertised stolen credit card limit observed was greater than $4,000.

Symantec said that the geographical locations of underground economy servers are constantly changing to evade detection.

"As evidenced by the Report on the Underground Economy, today's cyber-criminals are thriving off on information they are gathering without permission from consumers and businesses," Symantec STAR vice president Stephen Trilling said in a statement.

"As these individuals and groups continue to devise new tools and techniques to defraud legitimate users around the globe, protection and mitigation against such attacks must become an international priority."

Financial account information was the second most common category advertised, making up 20 per cent of the total. Higher-priced bank account information, which sells online for anywhere between $10 and $1,000, had an average reported balance of nearly $40,000, which meant that industry wide, the stolen bank account market was worth $1.7 billion during the period.