Countering Distrust in Illicit Online Networks: The Dispute Resolution Strategies of Cybercriminals

Countering Distrust in Illicit Online Networks: The Dispute Resolution Strategies of Cybercriminals

The core of this paper is a detailed investigation of the dispute resolution system contained within Darkode, an elite cybercriminal forum. Extracting the dedicated disputes section from within the marketplace, where users can report bad behaviour and register complaints, we carry out content analysis on these threads. This involves both descriptive statistics across the dataset and qualitative analysis of particular posts of interest, leading to a number of new insights. First, the overall level of disputes is quite high, even though members are vetted for entry in the first instance. Second, the lower ranked members of the marketplace are the most highly represented category for both the plaintiffs and defendants. Third, vendors are accused of malfeasance far more often than buyers, and that their “crimes” are most commonly either not providing the product/service or providing a poor one. Fourth, the monetary size of the disputes is surprisingly small. Finally, only 23.1% of disputes reach a clear outcome.

This paper is co-authored by Benoit Dupont and Jonathan Lusthaus

Benoît Dupont, Professor of Criminology, Scientific Director of the Smart Cybersecurity Network, Université de Montréal

Benoît Dupont, is the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity, after having held the Canada Research Chair in Security and Technology between 2006 and 2016. He is a Professor of Criminology at the Université de Montréal and the Scientific Director of the Smart Cybersecurity Network (SERENE-RISC), which he founded in 2014. He also sits as an observer representing the research community on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Cyber Threat Exchange (CCTX) and is a member of CATA Alliance's Cybercrime Advisory Council. His current research interests focus on the governance of security and the use of networked initiatives to enhance offline and online safety, as well as the coevolution of crime and technology, and in particular the social organization of malicious hackers, as well as the international comparison and evaluation of effective and efficient cybersecurity policies. He has received several awards including the "Médaille Vigilance et Loyauté argent" (2013) awarded by the Sûreté du Québec, the "Francopol Prize" (2010), the "Gabriel-Tarde Prize" (2004) and the "Denis-Caroll Young Researcher Award" (2005) for his book Construction et réforme d'une police : le cas australien.