A Review of Motivations of Illegal Cyber Activities

Abstract

Illegal cyber activities have been developing in past three decades with the mounting number of users of the computer and mobile networks. Potential perpetrators obtained more opportunities to instigate cyber attacks at different targets, at different scales, and from different motives. The existence of motivated attackers is one of an underlying trinity (together with the potential victims and weak guardianship) that leads to illegal activities (Cohen and Felson, 1979). In order to deal with illegal cyber activities, it is indispensable to have a better understanding of motivations of those potential attackers. The purpose of this article is to explore into motivation behind sophisticated illegal cyber activities, with an emphasis on reviewing findings in law enforcement as well as previous scholarly research. It was found that the motives of illegal cyber activities might diverge significantly from one another, but they might also have enormous similarity in that they were frequently directed to grey areas of social lives.