Know Your Enemy: Social Dynamics of Hacking

I am very pleased to announce the publication of another paper in our Know Your Enemy white paper series: “KYE – Social Dynamics of Hacking” authored by Thomas J. Holt and Max Kilger from our Spartan Devils Honeynet Project Chapter. In this paper, Tom and Max go to the roots of the Know Your Enemy series and shine light on the social groups that are involved in hacking.

Abstract
Though most information security research focuses on current threats, tools, and techniques to defeat attacks, it is vital to recognize and understand the humans behind attacks. Individual attackers have various skills, motives, and social relationships that shape their actions and the resources they target. In this paper we will explore the distribution of skill in the global hacker community, the influence of on and off-line social relationships, motivations across attackers, and the near-future of threats to improve our understanding of the hacker and attacker community.


The paper is available at https://honeynet.org/papers/socialdynamics.

Enjoy!