An Anatomy of Crypto-Enabled Cybercrimes

An Anatomy of Crypto-Enabled Cybercrimes

6 Jan 2023

While the advent of cryptocurrencies and digital assets holds promise for improving and disrupting financial systems by offering cheap, quick, and secure transfer of value, it also opens up new payment channels for cybercrimes. A prerequisite to solving a problem is understanding the nature of the problem. Assembling a diverse set of public, proprietary, and hand-collected data, including dark web conversations in Russian, we conduct the first detailed anatomy of crypto-enabled cybercrimes and highlight relevant economic issues. Our analyses reveal that a few organized ransomware gangs dominate the space and have evolved into sophisticated corporate-like operations with physical offices, franchising, and affiliation programs. Their techniques have also become more aggressive over time, entailing multiple layers of extortion and reputation management. Blanket restrictions on cryptocurrency usage may prove ineffective in tackling crypto-enabled cybercrime and hinder innovations. Instead, blockchain transparency and digital footprints enable effective forensics for tracking, monitoring, and shutting down dominant cybercriminal organizations.
corporate finance other asset pricing public economics law and economics international finance and macroeconomics development and growth productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship national fiscal issues innovation and r&d

Authors

Lin William Cong, Campbell R. Harvey, Daniel Rabetti, Zong-Yu Wu

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Acknowledgements & Disclosure
Rabetti thanks the Israel Science Foundation, Cornell FinTech Initiative, and Tel Aviv University for financial support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3386/w30834
Published in
United States of America

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