Cybercrime and cybercriminals: A comprehensive study

Abstract

The increasing expansion and diversification in the strategies and practices of cybercrime has become a difficult obstacle in order both to understand the extent of embedded risks and to define efficient policies of prevention for corporations, institutions and agencies. The present study represents the most comprehensive review of the origin, typologies and developments of Cybercrime phenomenon over the past decade so far. By means of this detailed study, this paper tackles the issue first describing and discussing former different criteria of classification in the field and secondly, providing a broad list of definitions and an analysis of the cybercrime practices. A conceptual taxonomy of cybercrime is introduced and described. The proposal of a classification criterion is used in conjunction with a cybercrime hierarchy derived from the degrees and scale of vulnerability and targets.