Cybercrime is a major challenge facing the world. Impacting countless citizens around the globe, it has developed into an enormous profit-making industry. Many approaches investigating cybercrime thus far have focused on the technological elements, but there is now a great need to understand the “human” side of online crime: Who are the cybercriminals? What motivates them? Where do they come from? How do they operate?

 

Founded in 2013, by Jonathan Lusthaus and Federico Varese, the Human Cybercriminal Project aims to pioneer research on these exciting issues. One of the core questions addressed by the project is how the economic and social activities of online criminals are governed when they are outside the control of the state. In the case of cybercriminals, the problem of a lack of trust is a very more complex question: not only are they all criminals but many online interactions by cybercriminals are ostensibly anonymous. They often don’t know who they are dealing with or how to find them if their deal goes awry... How do they overcome this challenge?

 

In 2018, under the leadership of Nigel Phair, UNSW Canberra Cyber joined the Human Cybercriminal Project as a partner, playing a core role within this important research agenda.