Rank the individual motives for cyber crime from 1 to 7 as the motives that you think make the most sense (being 1) to the least sense (being 7). Explain why you rank each motive the way you rank it.
Out of the seven individual motives to commit cyber crimes, the one that makes the most sense to me would be for money because digital attacks may be viewed by the offenders as low risk crimes that provide access to large profits in some cases. The next motive would be for multiple reasons. I think it makes sense that threat actors would want to gain money while also honing their technical skills, fueling their ego, etc. Furthermore, political motives would be my next ranked motive for cyber crime because I could see someone with radical political beliefs wanting to hack into a polling system in order to skew voting results or perhaps leak information that could discredit their opposing beliefs. Some hackers might even view this as a service to their preferred political party. I would then rank recognition as the fourth reason to commit cyber crime due to some online criminals seeking attention for their illicit actions in order to gain notoriety. Next, I would rank revenge as the fifth motive. While I don’t think this is the best motive, I could see some threat actors utilizing the internet as a way to get back at someone who has wronged them in the past, maybe by leaking information that would undermine a person or establishment. For the next ranking, I would put entertainment as sixth; I wouldn’t think of illegal hacking as a good pastime, but I could see hackers wanting to test their technical skills online. Lastly, I would rank boredom. This does not seem like a good motive as there is always some risk when it comes to committing a cyber crime, or any crime for that matter.