Motives for cybercriminal behavior ranked from worst to best explanation:
After being provided 7 articles about cybercrime, each accompanied by a potential motive for the criminal behavior, I’m asked to determine which proposed motivations best explain the criminal behavior. I’ll rank them 1 (worst explanation) to 7 (best explanation).
1. Boredom is the explanation that makes the least sense for its associated article. It’s being used to describe the uptick in cyberbullying and child grooming that has occurred during Covid. Boredom doesn’t stand as a good motive because it’s being used to describe the behavior of the victim. Boredom is simply the underlying cause of behaviors that expose children to these crimes, and therefore not an explanation for the perpetrator’s motive.
2. The second least sufficient explanation is entertainment. This is used to describe a man who scraped 700 million LinkedIn profiles. The reason I don’t consider it a great explanation is that he sold the content. He may have enjoyed doing it, but selling the data wouldn’t have been necessary if he was simply doing it for fun.
3. The third least likely explanation is recognition. This was used to describe a DDoS attack on a member of UK parliament days before an election. There are two reasons I don’t find recognition as a fitting motive. The first is that the crime clearly has a political angle. The second reason is that he harassed a woman online during the investigation. This would clearly not have been done for recognition and suggests compulsion or personality issues.
4. I listed money here because I think money partially explains the behavior in the article but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The article contains study results and commentary from cybercriminals on their spending habits. The habits range from reasonable sounding investment strategies to lavish spending sprees. Those that are using their cybercrime as a vehicle for financial freedom and prosperity seem more likely to have money as their best explanation. The more indulgent examples are likely motivated by other behaviors like recognition, ego etc.
5. Revenge is a good explanation for the image abuse offenses described in the article provided. These are examples of people who disseminate private, explicit material online against the wishes of the subject. While revenge is clearly a motive used in this type of crime, the article explains how celebrities are targeted and deepfakes are used. Revenge is not the best explanation for these behaviors.
6. Having political motivations is a great explanation for the associated article. It describes groups of mostly young, disaffected hackers using their skills to target political groups. This one seems straightforward. Politically motivated activists targeting political groups.
7. I have multiple factors as the best motive option for the article provided. The article provided generally describes the motivations behind cybercrime and explains that a variety of factors ranging from ego, fame and psychology to money and socioeconomic influences play a roll. These are all excellent motivations to explain criminal behavior and I expect that many or all of them play a role in the majority of cybercrime that takes place in our society.