AMoC: Advanced Modelling of Cyber Criminal Careers

Recent research in debriefing arrested criminals has identified that cyber crime is not a solitary and anti-social activity, but one wherein online social interactions play a critical role in the recruitment, training and professional advancement of criminals. As such, investigating these social interactions is important to understanding the dynamics leading to initial engagement in cyber crime, continued careers and (potentially) retirement. Multiple online lenses into cyber criminal communities are ripe for exploitation to this end. Advanced data mining of these resources can be complemented with police reports from debriefing of offenders and evidence from investigator experience to form a detailed understanding of the characteristics of cyber offenders, their behavioural patterns and their career progression in cyber crime.
The AMoC project aims to take a multidisciplinary approach, combining expertise in intelligent technologies to tackle cyber crime with methodological approaches from social sciences, such as psychology and (socio)linguistic theory, and law enforcement approaches to cyber crime, to understand the social and economic development of cyber criminal careers.