Cybercrime During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

Introduction

Cyberspace is composed of several different layers that are essential to the functioning of an interconnected and functional network. The physical, software and informational layers, although forming the functional body, are of little interest to the political field. It is, on the contrary, the social stratum that concerns and interests politicians and political scientists in particular. This layer includes the set of individual behaviors interacting with cyberspace and a collective component that affects the policies, institutions, laws, norms, regulating and framing the interactions and use of cyberspace. Despite the fact that cybercriminals may be interested in flaws in software or physical systems to commit their crimes, the social character is also fraught with vulnerabilities that can be identified and exploited by cybercriminals. Considering that each user is responsible for his or her actions in the cyberspace and that cybersecurity practices are not always appropriate or sufficient, the user is simultaneously a potential victim and a system gateway. In that sense, systems are vulnerable from the very moment a user behaves unsafely.

By virtue of its supranational character, the cyberspace is particularly difficult to govern and secure. Based on the amount of information that passes through the networks at all times, supervising and controlling information and transactions, verifying content legitimacy and legality and processing complaints or incident reports ...