The Heart Wants What It Wants: Convenience and Moral Drift in Cybercrime
Tim Pappa, Vladimir Drinkman
This presentation by a former FBI profiler and a Russian former cybercriminal felon challenge some of the beliefs and attitudes you might have about how cybercrime gangs find people willing to help their businesses, and how the motivations of everyday people are closer to cybercriminals than we might imagine. We examine cybercriminal gangs that offer support services to its gang affiliates and partners. While some observers have characterized this support as marketing ploys, the use of legitimate service industries is largely unknown. This presentation also contributes to crime convenience theory in cybercriminal and criminology contexts, suggesting that this framework for explaining why people not involved in crime become willing to support crime, might also reveal similar pathways in motivation between cybercriminals and people not involved in crime.