Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
13.5.3.2
Personal Motivations
Much of personal motivation for computer criminals is found in criminal psychol-
ogy. Motivations include money, revenge, the thrill, the challenge, because they
can, because they believe they have a right to. “There is no simple explanation as to
why computer criminals engage in hostile and destructive acts. The answer lies in a
complex mixture of factors that depends on the social environment and individual
personality factors.”
The fact there are criminals is part of IA justification. Crimi-
nals used to go after physical assets like gold, currency, or jewels. This required
physical presence and high risk on the part of the perpetrator. Now wealth exists as
bits on hard drive. These bits are accessible from anywhere in the world with rela-
tively low risk of discovery. Low risk on the part of the perpetrator equates to more
attempts. This is a justification for IA safeguards and monitoring devices.
13.5.3.3
Industrial Motivations
In a world economy of interconnected competitors, it is reasonable to believe that
corporate espionage has entered the information age. The status of economic power
versus third world is at stake and the way of life for people in those economies. Con-
sider a third-world country that desires in ten years to introduce a manufacturing
facility that will create hundreds or thousands of jobs. Further, consider an out-of-
work Cold War cyber-spy that offers his computer skills to accelerate time-to-mar-
ket entry by eight years at a $1.5 billion reduction in start-up fees through stealing
existing engineering documents and R&D data from a competitive company. A
$150 million payment to this individual is 10 percent of the legitimate alternative
with an 80 percent reduction in time to market. Moreover, even 1 percent of the
legitimate alternative is $15 million. Although $15 million may not hire the best,
it will still hire pretty darn good. These are strong motivations for industrial espio-
nage. These are also strong justification for IA.
Other industrial motivations include competitive advantage through knowl-
edge of competitor activities, discrediting a competitor, attempting to manipulate
a competitor's stock price and valuation (e.g., bringing down the Web site of an
online stock broker just as bad news hits the market), and many more.
13.5.3.4 Political Motivations
Political motivations include patriotism, rebellion, or power. Political motivations
may fall under the state-sponsored category, independents acting out of love of
their country or hatred of yours, or non-state-sponsored groups like Al Qaeda. A
state-sponsored group has considerably more resources to draw upon than the oth-
The Psychology of Computer Criminals
, pp. 6-19.
