Misunderstanding the Economic Factors of Cybercrime

A new study by Cambridge Cybercrime Centre titled Cybercrime is (often) boring: maintaining the infrastructure of cybercrime economies concludes that cybercrime is boring and recommends authorities change their strategy to highlight the tedium in order to dissuade the growth of cybercrime.

Warning: Full-blown rant ahead, as I am frustrated with reports such as this

Limited focused research, which does not look at the big picture as it evolves, leads readers to poor conclusions that are oversimplified and not couched in reality.

Do these researchers really think that cybercrime is driven by motivations about it being sexy, a fun work environment, or exciting? This report suggests that if we market cybercrime roles as being tedious, then people will not go down that path. Ha!

Wake up! The vast majority of cybercrime is motivated by personal financial gain. Period. Additionally, the massive number of new followers of digital crime won’t care about tedium or the opinions of people that live a lifestyle where convenience plays a significant role in how to put food on the table.

Throughout history organized crime has aligned to a pyramid model where the greatest number of participants are at the bottom, doing…