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SUMMARY:On the motivations and challenges of affiliates involved in cyberc
 rime - Masarah Paquet-Clouston\, Université de Montréal
DTSTART:20230228T140000Z
DTEND:20230228T150000Z
UID:TALK195562@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Kieron Ivy Turk
DESCRIPTION:The cybercrime industry is characterised by work specialisatio
 n to the point that it has become a volume industry with various “as-a-s
 ervice” offerings. One well-established “as-a-service” business mode
 l is blackmarket pay-per-install (PPI) services\, which outsource the spre
 ad of malicious programmes to affiliates. Such a business model represents
  the archetype of specialisation in the cybercrime industry: a mass of ind
 ividuals\, known as affiliates\, specialise in spreading malware on behalf
  of a service. Extant literature has focused on understanding the scope of
  such a service and its functioning. However\, despite the large number an
 d aggregate effect of affiliates on cybercrime\, little research has been 
 done on understanding why and how affiliates participate in such models. T
 his talk summarizes a study that depicts the motivations and challenges of
  affiliates spreading Android banking Trojan applications through a blackm
 arket PPI service. In short\, we conducted a thematic analysis of over 6\,
 000 of their private chat messages. The findings highlight affiliates’ l
 abour-intensive work and precarious working conditions along with their li
 mited income\, especially compared to their expectations. Affiliates’ pa
 rticipation in cybercrime was found to be entangled between legal and blac
 kmarket programmes\, as affiliates did not care about programmes’ legal 
 status as long as they yielded money. This study contributes to the litera
 ture by providing additional evidence on the downsides of work specialisat
 ion emerging from the cybercrime industry. 
LOCATION:Webinar - link on talks.cam page after 12 noon Tuesday
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