How cybercrime works?

How cybercrime works?

Cybercrime attacks can begin wherever there is digital data, opportunity and motive. Cybercriminals include everyone from the lone user engaged in cyber bullying to state-sponsored actors, like China's intelligence services. Cybercrimes generally do not occur in a vacuum; they are, in many ways, distributed in nature. That is, cybercriminals typically rely on other actors to complete the crime, whether it's the creator of malware using the dark web to sell code, the distributor of illegal pharmaceuticals using crypto currency brokers to hold virtual money in escrow or state threat actors relying on technology subcontractors to steal intellectual property (IP).

Cybercriminals use various attack vectors to carry out their cyber attacks and are constantly seeking new methods and techniques for achieving their goals, while avoiding detection and arrest.

Cybercriminals often carry out their activities using malware and other types of software, but social engineering is often an important component for executing most types of cybercrime. Phishing emails are another important component to many types of cybercrime but especially so for targeted attacks, like business email compromise (BEC), in which the attacker attempts to impersonate, via email, a business owner in order to convince employees to pay out bogus invoices.