Abstract
Ransomware is an epidemic that adversely affects the lives of both individuals and large companies, where criminals demand payments to release infected digital assets. In the wake of the ransomware success, Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has become a franchise offered through darknet marketplaces, allowing aspiring cybercriminals to take part in this dubious economy. We have studied contemporary darknet markets and forums over a period of two years using a netnographic research approach. Our findings show that RaaS currently seems like a modest threat relative to popular opinion. Compared to other types of illegal digital goods, there are rather few RaaS items offered for sale in darknet marketplaces, often with questionable authenticity. From our data we have created a value chain and descriptions of the actors involved in this economy.
Highlights
IntroductionThe term darknet is commonly associated with hidden networks on the Internet, and most prominently, The Onion Router (TOR), originally developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory to protect communication with agents stationed abroad but later made open to anyone who wants to anonymously interact with others
We have integrated the collected data from each phase and made an incarnation showing phenomena related to vendor resilience despite of marketplace takedowns, that there is a strong decline in the availability of RaaS items, that there is a high risk of buying fraudulent items, what kind of buyers/distributors the vendors are targeting, and a larger picture of the RaaS economy and its actors
Based on our own field notes from studying the darknet over two years and additional archival data going further back, the answer to our first research question is that the RaaS threat currently seems more modest than indicated in the media and reports from security companies
Summary
The term darknet is commonly associated with hidden networks on the Internet, and most prominently, The Onion Router (TOR), originally developed by the US Naval Research Laboratory to protect communication with agents stationed abroad but later made open to anyone who wants to anonymously interact with others. Another darknet example is the Invisible Internet Project (I2P), but it currently has fewer users and is considered less anonymous than TOR. A study by Moore and Rid (2016) gave a conservative estimate that 57% of the TOR websites facilitated criminal activities related to drugs, arms, murder and child pornography
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