Week 5 – Journal Entry

After looking over and reviewing articles of the 7 individual motives of cyber crime, here’s where I would rank each from the most sense to the least sense and why.

1. Multiple Reasons – The more motives a cyber criminal has when looking to hack or cause damage, the more dangerous they are when it comes to combating against them. It’s like any other criminal. The more reasons as to why they want to commit a certain crime, the more they’d be willing to go out there way and accomplish it.
2. For Money – Money drives the world whether we like it or not. Many want to be able to make money the easy way instead of actually having to work for it. If a cyber criminal knows that they can take advantage of vulnerabilities from an individual or corporation to steal money then it’ll be an easy payday for them. When you get hit with ransomware, notice that attackers use schemes that make it hard to decrypt if you’re not familiar with such deployments.
3. Political – Geopolitics play a pivotal role in cybersecurity throughout the world. No country in our world share the same views. If hacktivists know they can interfere with government or corporate structure, it’s to send a message.
4. Revenge – Like anything else, revenge is a strong motive. Often times it can be bittersweet. Sometimes cyber criminals will do it as a joke. The latter do it when they feel they’ve been wrongfully done. The overall motive of something like this is basically getting on someone’s bad side.
5. Recognition – Cyber criminals that commit malicious acts for recognition can be both a good and bad thing. On one hand you might have to deal with the stress of restoring a system after being down. On the other hand, we’ve seen many times in the history of cybersecurity attacks for recognition lead to pivotal moments on how to combat and harden systems for the future.
6. Entertainment – Cyber criminals that do what they do for their own amusement is both beneficial and flawed. Gray-hat or purple-hat hackers might commit acts while it may not be for their benefit, it could help individuals or companies uncover vulnerabilities. On the other hand, you might have ones that do it because they think their beyond the law.
7. Boredom – Waking up one day and committing a cyber crime just cause you were “bored” and “felt like it”, is the most illogical thing. With offensive security skills that advanced you can do a lot with them for the greater good.