Online Hacker Forum Censorship: Would Banning the Bad Guys Attract Good Guys?

Date

2017-01-04

Contributor

Advisor

Department

Instructor

Depositor

Speaker

Researcher

Consultant

Interviewer

Narrator

Transcriber

Annotator

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Volume

Number/Issue

Starting Page

Ending Page

Alternative Title

Abstract

To tackle the ubiquitous cybersecurity threats, a few countries have enacted legislation to criminalize the production, distribution and possession of computer misuse tools. Consequently, online hacker forums, which enable the provision and dissemination of malicious cyber-attack techniques among potential hackers or technology-savvy users, are subject to censorship. This project examines the mixed impacts of online hacker forum censorship on users’ contribution to protection discussion through a natural experiment with large-scale content analysis. We find that while the enforcement indeed reduced the discussion on malicious cyber-attacks, the discussion on cybersecurity protection could increase or decrease in different scenarios. The rationale is that while the online hacker forum censorship imposes risk to the discussion of malicious attacks, it also reduces the potential benefit from discussing protection issues. Policy implications are discussed.

Description

Keywords

Content Analysis, Hackers, Internet Censorship, Information Security, Online Forum.

Citation

Extent

10 pages

Format

Geographic Location

Time Period

Related To

Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Related To (URI)

Table of Contents

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Rights Holder

Local Contexts

Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.