Towards a Conceptual Typology of Darknet Risks

ABSTRACT

Increased rewards and reduced risks drive illicit networks. Cybercriminals seek to avoid risks, including detection, arrests, sanctions, and violence. Hence, they employ several strategies to avoid operational risks when accessing darknet sites, communicating, making payments, shipping and delivery, and resolving disputes. Each operation involves transactions that should work together, such that when a transaction is disrupted, it increases its risk and reduces the crime’s benefits. In this study, we examine these risks, and their avoidance strategies, in an attempt to highlight transactions that could be disrupted. We develop a typology of darknet risks, a parsimonious conceptual model abstracted from the literature on risk originators (internal or external) and risk targets (vendors or buyers). This study further clarifies how risk avoidance strategies may be disrupted to increase the risks and reduce the reward of darknet crime.

KEYWORDS:

• Cybercrime
• illicit networks
• darknet marketplace
• visibility reduction
• risk avoidance
• crime script

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) through an interagency agreement between DHS and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). ORISE is managed by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) under DOE contract number DE-SC0014664. This document has not been formally reviewed by DHS. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of DHS, DOE, or ORAU/ORISE. DHS, DOE and ORAU/ORISE do not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.