Dante Scaramazzo
CYSE201S
10/1/2022
Article Reviews
Journal 1: International Journal of Cyber Criminology
“Cyber Violence with Biosocial Perspective and The Role of Preventative Legislative Mechanism”
By: Slamet Suhartono
Suhartono’s main research question in writing this article was, “to know how the administrative or legal mechanism of a nation could attempt to understand the biosocial perspectives of cybercrimes and resolve the issues accordingly.” (Suhartono, page 3) The author hopes this study will align with the principles of social science, in helping defend and protect citizens from cyber crimes and attacks. Suhartono prepared for this study by conducting literature reviews from previous studies, with the intention to learn from these studies to enhance the current study. He started with articles on Biology, reading theories that biology is directly related to criminal behavior and social behavior. Articles written by Cesare Lombroso and William Sheldon, both criminologists, suggest that criminality could be provoked by physical features or human development. Further articles argue that it could be personality traits, such as easily getting irritated or short temper that drives criminals. He then moves onto articles about cyber bullying and cyber violence, which seems to be prominent among teenagers. Finally, he digs into research pertaining administrative and legislative mechanisms. Systems like Global Cybersecurity Index raise awareness about cybersecurity and its risks, across many countries. Furthermore, Donald Trump signed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act in 2018, which was designed to assist the government and private sectors in cybersecurity related issues. Suhartono then started his own study, where he first piggybacked on Genetic-social and meta-theoretical framework that has been commonly applied to cyber violence studies. They used this to build a model that could help predict cyber violence and behavior. They collected qualitative data from sources like law archives, databases, and repositories. They then analyzed this data using system analysis and the synthesis of internal and external documentation. The findings of this study determined that a secure online environment needed to be established for everyone, along with legal and administrative support for the victims of cybercrimes. This can be made possible through establishing a National Cybersecurity Authority to help enforce legal strategies against cybercrimes. Not only does this help address the victims of cyber violence, it also contributes to society as a whole. A safer online environment where interactions are monitored and ensured for safety would benefit to everyone in creating a safer environment.
Journal 2: International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime
“Dynamics of Dark Web Financial Marketplaces: An Exploratory Study of Underground Fraud and Scam Business”
By: Bo Ra Jung, Kyung-Shick Choi, and Claire Seungeun Lee
This article discusses the broad dangers of the Dark Web and promotes public awareness for what is happening behind the scenes, as well as discussing safety precautions and preventative measures. The authors claim that their main reason for this study is to focus on discovering what main products scammers encourage customers to buy, how financial market vendors operate their business, and which marketing strategies are used to scam their customers. These questions will help them defend the principles of social sciences and help protect the public from falling for schemes on the Dark Web. To start their research, they began by examining the Routine Active Theory, which states that crime is most likely to happen under these three conditions: having motivated offenders, having suitable targets, and the lack of a capable guardian to protect the target. They also studied how these criminals attract vendors. These criminals will advertise their products on forums that they know will be used by their targets, and some will provide themselves with false good reviews, to make themselves look like a more reliable vendor. Finally, they reviewed why some people are more likely to fall victims to scammers than others. In a study done by researches Whitty and Buchanan in 2012, they claim that legitimacy and authority are the main reason people fall for these scams. Scammers will paint themselves to seem more professional, and will sometimes use well known brand references or good reviews to prove they are a worthy vendor. These all-build trust between the vendor and the consumer, until ultimately, the consumer winds up scammed. This study focused mainly on empirical reviews, and studied different kind of Dark Web financial marketplaces. They compared each vendor to different factors of the Dark Web financial marketplaces and then used that to correlate to what scam they were committing. They used a type of qualitative analysis called thematic analysis to create a software called NVivo, that performs a systematic analysis of financial services on the dark web. For quantitative data, they collected samples from 117 financial market sites on the Dark Web. Each site was studied to find information that revealed it’s characteristics, such as products being sold, what cryptocurrency was being used, their customer service, and its security. From the data they gathered, they were able to construct a codebook. With any experiment there are two variables, the independent variable, and the dependent. The dependent variable in this study were the scam lists. The independent variables were scam products, customer services, security and privacy, currency exchange service, and source of products. Their findings only reinforced the importance of setting up precautions to avoid getting targeted by scammers. In addition, the authors discuss amping up information systems, making them harder to be scammed. They push for more public awareness to inform customers about fraud detection and how it is difficult to monitor in illegal marketplaces. Not only does this cater to the victims of scamming, but also can help the public be more aware before making an online purchase of a product or service. They encourage the public to stay vigilant, and make sure they do their proper research on who they are buying things from online.