Cooperation Among Profit-Driven Cybercriminals

This talk will address how profit-driven cybercriminals manage to achieve cooperation, organisation and governance when operating in an extremely low trust environment. It is well known that criminals, who operate outside the law and the protection of the state, face difficulties in governing their relations due both to the requirement of secrecy and a deficit of trust. For cybercriminals the anonymity of the Internet creates even greater challenges for assessing trustworthiness and enforcing agreements. It might be expected that cybercriminals would often act alone and not in collaboration with others. Nonetheless, in recent years cybercriminals have increasingly formed links with other criminals. The purpose of this paper is to identify mechanisms that may have emerged to allow such cooperation to be established and maintained. It focusses on a discussion of: reputation; performance; appearance; and enforcement.