Chapter 7
Understanding Cybercriminals
7.1 Understanding the context
In order to prevent, detect, pursue or punish cybercrimes, it is necessary to
understand the proles and the motivations of cybercriminals. Understanding
a hacker’s motivation and level of technical skills can help assess how serious
an attack is and assist in devising an appropriate counter-strategy. To secure
an information system, it is necessary to know against whom it needs to be
protected.
The preceding chapters have shown that cybercriminality is within the
power of virtually everyone. There is a vast range of motivations and knowl-
edge among cybercriminals, and the ways of expressing these are many and
varied. Because of this, it is difcult to provide an exhaustive ...