There are many motives of cybercriminals to act maliciously in this world. Depending on the individuals and crimes, the motives can revolve around entertainment, political needs, revenge, being bored, financial reasons, and for many other reasons. At some point in our lives, we get bored. However, a malicious actor is so bored, that the threat actor decides to web-scrape organizations like LinkedIn for user data for entertainment purposes and then sell it online. It can be argued that the threat actor is scraping for publicly available data, while others say that the actor is abusing tools for malicious intent. Thus, it’s considered a failure for organizations like LinkedIn to secure their data. For that reason, this motive is ranked #2 as making the most sense. 

Malicious actors can act for political reasons, whether it’s to influence elections or for other political reasons, the intent is considered malicious for many reasons. Social media platforms can be used to push propaganda to sway people to act a certain way. Thus, for some people, such propaganda is harmful to the minds of young people. As a result, legislation should be enforced to regulate what is posted on social media and what shouldn’t be there in the first place. For that reason, I rank political motives as #1 as making the most sense as a motive for malicious intent. 

Revenge is another motive for malicious actors to act the way they do. Things like image-based sexual abuse or ‘revenge porn’ inflicts severe harm on its victims. The victims can be as young as 14 years old, and the offenders are complete strangers with malicious motives to extort and troll their victims. Revenge doesn’t always occur online as most offenders can utilize other forms of revenge that doesn’t require the internet. Thus, I rank this motive as #3 as making some sense being a motive for malicious intent. 

Another motive for malicious intent is boredom. The internet is dangerous, and kids are vulnerable to the threats lurking on the internet. Sometimes, internet pedophiles target these young kids and coerce kids into posting pictures that compromise their safety. During Covid lockdowns, these kids are provided devices so they can surf the internet without getting bored. Now, these kids are on Facebook and Instagram, interacting with strangers they shouldn’t even be speaking to online. These kids can play video games and exchange details with strangers, and it’s harmful to the wellbeing of children. For these reasons, this motive scores #2 as making the most sense for malicious intent.  

Humans desire recognition and sometimes, people go too far with attracting recognition. In the case of Bradley Niblock, he DDoS assaulted a party candidates’ website that cause it to not run properly after too many requests overwhelm it. Consequently, the website was forced to shut down and the candidate had to engage a mitigation service to stop the attack. The motive for recognition is not really understood, so for that reason I give this motive a #6 as making the least sense. Surprisingly, Niblock posed as UGLegion to attract likes to his Twitter site and still acted maliciously is not something to be understood as gaining recognition. 

The motives for malicious intent can revolve around making money. Some cybercriminals make good money without paying taxes. Whether they steal data and sell it for profit or encrypt data from large organizations for money, these criminals spend their money quite easily. Such spending increases the status of these criminals to be with others and to be with romantic interests, as well as buying precious metal, drugs, and other expensive items. Such purchases have little to no regulation or oversight with regards to cybercrime. For these reasons, I rank financial motives as #4 as making some sense regarding malicious intent. 

Cybercriminals are driven by other factors that are related to socioeconomic and psychological factors. Interviews with cybercriminals reveal that some were proud of their ability to hack into systems built by professionals. Perhaps, there might be a way to transition cybercriminals into ethical white hat hackers. These black hat hackers have passion and are skilled at what they do but are clouded by circumstances of socioeconomic and psychological issues. Thus, these small details that motivate these black hat hackers to attack isn’t well understood by professionals. For that reason, motives driven by other factors is given #5 as somewhat making the least sense regarding malicious intent.