Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

Table 9.1 
A Taxonomy for Perceived Motivation of Cybercrime
Motivations/
intent
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
Context
Major website has 
gone down—
affected users 
include public
Financial
Who
British electronic 
army
Political
✓
What
DDoS attacks
Moral
✓
Where
Website/card 
system failure
Self-
actualization
✓
When
2 pm-4 pm 
Thursday 21st
Exploitation
How
No technical 
detail currently 
known
Promotional
✓
Other
Second attack of 
its type in 2 days

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105
 
Case studies
as oppression. Moral motivations for cyber-attacks can be complex in nature—this 
taxonomy allows for general categorization and a limitation is that it could be seen as 
too simplistic.
Self-actualization relates to individuals or groups who carry out attacks out of 
curiosity—they could be testing their own knowledge and skill or testing the security 
systems—again for knowledge rather than for purposeful corruption or disruption. 
They may also hack for kudos or notoriety.
Whilst exploitation could fall in line with moral motivations it is a separate cat-
egory which relates to the exploitation of human beings (for example, in cases of 
human trafficking and child abuse). Cases involving cyber bullying and/or cyber ha-
rassment could also fall under this category. In this chapter there is no case study 
which relates to this category however Chapter 11 discusses issues surrounding child 
exploitation.
The final motivation listed in this taxonomy is promotional which relates to pub-
licity and for this taxonomy it means to gather awareness through news media, social 
media and in some cases develop and maintain an online presence. These defini-
tions are not exhaustive but provide concepts for operators using the grid to create a 
repository.
In cases where cybercrimes have been conducted anonymously, it is difficult to 
categorize the agent's motivations unless they have released a statement to the press, 
or publicly laid claim to the attack outlining their reasons for conducting it. Whilst 
some hackers overtly state their reasons behind the attack, it is important to acknowl-
edge that covert motivations may also be present but not publically acknowledged. 
This taxonomy works by being able to interchange the categories. The cyber-attack or 
crime may appear to have a primary motivation but then may also have a secondary 
motivation (which in some cases may be underlying). In more complicated contexts 
there may be multiple motivations where “tertiary” motivations can be applied. So for 
instance a DDoS attack on a bank may primarily be moral (against the fact the bank-
ing system is corrupt and has caused an economic crisis) but the secondary motivation 
may be publicity, whilst a tertiary may be self-actualization. Each case should be as-
sessed individually and may even have multiple primary and secondary motivations.