By Majid Yar

Cybercrime and Society provides a clear, systematic, and critical introduction to current debates about cybercrime. It locates the phenomenon in the wider contexts of social, political, cultural, and economic change. It is the first book to draw upon perspectives spanning criminology, sociology, law, politics, and cultural studies to examine the whole range of cybercrime issues.

Thousand Oaks, CA; London: SAGE, 2006. 200p.

By United States. Department of the Treasury

From the Introduction: "This action plan responds to Section 7(c) of Executive Order (E.O.) 14067, 'Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets,' which calls for the development of a coordinated interagency action plan for mitigating the digital-asset-related illicit finance and national security risks as identified in the U.S. government's National Strategy for Combating Terrorist and Other Illicit Financing (Illicit Financing Strategy). [...] E.O. 14067 recognizes that digital assets may pose significant illicit financing risks and commits the U.S. government to mitigating these and any other national security risks. This action plan identifies priority and supporting actions to support this commitment in line with the priorities and supporting actions identified in the Illicit Financing Strategy specific to uncovering and mitigating the misuse of digital assets by illicit actors. These priority actions include monitoring risks, working with international partners to improve cooperation on and implementation of international AML/CFT [anti-money-laundering/countering-the-financing-of-terrorism] standards, strengthening our regulations and operational frameworks, and improving private sector compliance and information sharing, among others. The action plan begins with an overview of the illicit financing risks and U.S. government efforts to mitigate these risks before laying out these priority actions."

United States. Department of the Treasury. 2022-09-16. 20p.

By Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo

The biggest online threat to businesses and consumers today is ransomware, a category of malware that can encrypt your computer files until you pay a ransom to unlock them. With this practical book, you'll learn how easily ransomware can infect your system and what steps you can take to stop the attack before it sets foot in your network. Security experts Allan Liska and Timothy Gallo explain how the success of these attacks has spawned not only several variants of ransomware, but also a litany of ever-changing ways they're delivered to targets. You'll learn pragmatic methods for responding quickly to a ransomware attack, as well as how to protect yourself from becoming infected in the first place"

Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2017. 174p.

Edited by Gergana Bulanova-Hristova, Karsten Kasper, Geralda Odinot, Maite Verhoeven, Ronald Pool, Christianne de Poot, Yael Werner and Lars Korsell.

The threats arising from different types of cybercrime are real and constantly evolving, as the internet with its anonymity and borderless reach provides new opportunities for physical and virtual criminal activities. We can see complex cybercriminal networks connecting subgroups and also single individuals that are active on, through and against the internet. At the same time there are also ‘offline’ criminal organisations using the internet to facilitate their activities and to increase their profit. Even so-called ‘traditional’ organised crime groups are widening their criminal portfolios by committing cybercrime. By constantly evolving online opportunities, their acts of ‘traditional crimes’ become even more far-reaching and damaging, thus benefiting the criminal organisation. It is not only the involvement of organised crime in cybercrime that is dangerous, but also cybercrime committed in an organised manner. Cyber-OC represents the convergence of these two phenomena. Despite the huge threat arising from its cumulative character, Cyber-OC is frequently underestimated and differently defined even by law enforcement authorities.

Wiesbaden: Bundeskriminalamt Criminalistic Institute, 2016. 298p.

By R. S. van Wegberg.

Many scientific studies and industry reports have observed the emergence of so-called cybercrime-as-a-service. The idea is that specialized suppliers in the underground economy cater to criminal entrepreneurs in need of certain capabilities – substituting specialized technical knowledge with “knowing what to buy”. The impact of this trend could be dramatic, as technical skill becomes an insignificant entry barrier for cybercrime. Forms of cybercrime motivated by financial gain, make use of a unique configuration of technical capabilities to be successful. Profit-driven cybercrimes, as they are called, range from carding to financial malware, and from extortion to cryptojacking. Given their reliance on technical capabilities, particularly these forms of cybercrime benefit from a changing crime paradigm: the commoditization of cybercrime. That is, standardized offerings of technical capabilities supplied through structured markets by specialized vendors that cybercriminals can contract to fulfill tools and techniques used in their business model. Commoditization enables outsourcing of components used in cybercrime - i.e., a botnet or cash-out solution. Thus lowering entry barriers for aspiring criminals, and potentially driving further growth in cybercrime. As many cybercriminal entrepreneurs lack the skills to provision certain parts of their business model, this incentivizes them to outsource these parts to specialized criminal vendors. With online anonymous markets - like Silk Road or AlphaBay - these entrepreneurs have found a new platform to contract vendors and acquire technical capabilities for a range of cybercriminal business models. A configuration of technical capabilities used in a business model reflects the value chain of resources. Here, not the criminal activities themselves, but the technical enablers for all these criminal activities are depicted. To create a comprehensive understanding of how businessmodels in profit-driven cybercrime are impacted by the commoditization of cybercrime, we investigate how outsourced components can fulfill technical capabilities needed in profit-driven cybercrime. This is where we use an economic lens to deliver an overview of criminal activities, resources and strategies in profit-driven cybercrime. In turn, knowing how outsourcing fulfils A study into the treatment of victims and its effects on their attitudes and behaviourparts of the value chain, can help law enforcement exploit ‘chokepoints’ – i.e., use the weakest link in the value chain where criminals appear to be vulnerable.

Delft University of Technology, 2020. 202p.

Weulen Kranenbarg, M.

The main goal of this dissertation was to empirically compare cyber-offenders with traditional offenders on four domains in criminology: offending over the life-course, personal and situational risk factors for offending and victimisation, similarity in deviance in the social network, and motivations related to different offence clusters. The focus was on new forms of crime that target IT and in which IT is key in the commission of the crime, so-called cyber-dependent crimes, like malicious hacking, web defacement, illegal control over IT-systems, malware use, and so on. These crimes provide a unique test case for traditional criminological explanations for offending, as these did not exist prior to the rise in the use of ITsystems. The anonymous digital context in which these crimes take place may have changed, for example, the situations in which opportunities for committing crime occur, the skills and personality characteristics that are needed to commit these crimes, the perceptions of the consequences of offending, and the interpersonal dynamics between offenders and victims.

Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam, 2018. 230p.

By Marleen Weulen Kranenbarg, Yaloe van der Toolen, Frank Weerman.

This report aims to increase our insight into the explanation of cyber-delinquency among juveniles. We examined which individual characteristics and environmental factors are related to different types of cybercrime, with a specific focus on the importance of peer relationships. We used a longitudinal research design (three waves of data collection) among a substantial sample of Dutch youths in secondary or tertiary education (with ages between 12 and 25), who were following ICT programmes, tracks, or courses. These students were chosen because they are considered to be at an elevated risk of committing cybercrime. We used questionnaires to collect self-report data on a large variety of cyber-offences, and on characteristics of both offline and online peers. We distinguished between cyber-dependent offending (i.e. offences requiring the use of online means) and cyber-enabled offending (i.e. offences existing in the offline world, but that can also be conducted online). We also included questions about common traditional types of offending. In addition, we asked the respondents about various individual characteristics and environmental factors and we collected detailed social network data on the respondents’ school friends. Our methods (for details, see Chapter 3) addressed various important limitations in previous research on cyberdelinquency (see Chapter 2).

Amsterdam: VU University Amsterdam/Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, 2022. 107p.