The hacker’s guide to staying out of jail: Examining prevention of prosecution content on the dark web

This paper examines the phenomenon of `prevention of prosecution': the methods, tools, and services that cybercriminals use to escape justice. In a semi-automated investigation spanning ten different underground forums, we classify content by the type of prosecution avoidance strategy and the level of support involved (free advice, guides for purchase, or services marketed to customers), allowing us to characterise the different provision across different offender populations.

Our investigation provides insight into the legal concerns of cybercriminals, their priorities amongst the different options for countering law enforcement action, and possible disruption points for law enforcement agencies or other actors seeking to redress the poor rates of prosecution for cybercrime. In particular, we identify a range of free advice of variable quality, a small number of services explicitly marketed with the aim of defeating law enforcement, and signs of unmet demand that could be exploited by careful operations.