What Drives Hackers to a Life of Cybercrime?

What Drives Hackers to a Life of Cybercrime?: It is no surprise that cyber-criminals are financially motivated, but according to the new research, many actors in the cyber world are also driven to a life of digital crime by ego as well as socioeconomic and psychological factors.

A recent report Under the Hoodie: Lessons from a Season of Penetration Testing which published by Rapid 7, Wendy Zamora, the malware intelligence at Malwarebytes, set to a work to research to explore the psychology, motivations and other underlying factors that drive people to cybercrime.

The result of her work is just published today in very long form of article “Under the Hoodie: Why Money, Power, and Ego Drive Hackers to Cybercrime” Which do includes the interview with active cyber-criminals as well as the research from forensic psychologists, law enforcement officials and professors of criminology.

The Zamora’s research which reveals that the main motivation behind the cyber-criminals include socioeconomic factors, technical skill and psychological drivers such as the revenge and ego. Throughout this article she has break down each of the factors to create general cyber criminal persona, pinpointing the various motivations to particular forms of cybercrime, such as social engineering and malware creation.

In reference to an interview with one of her subjects who became enamored by which he could earn money, Zamora writes, “What’s not like? Money, popularity, and a quite screw to the man, He was proud of his ability to hack into and modify programs built by professionals.”

The result of her research has pointed out the value of criminal profiling, psychological assessment which looks at both personality and physical characteristics.

Understanding that what really motives the cyber-criminals are as helpful as to convert them to white hat hackers. “There’s a razor thin line separating the white hats from the black,” Zamora describes.

“Cyber-criminals are equally passionate and skilled at what they do, but the lens through which they view the world may be blurred by socioeconomic circumstances or psychological hangs-ups. There are those that may be beyond hope, but there are also those who are simply too young or too insecure to work a system that feels like it’s set up to watch them fail.”