An economic analysis of ransomware and its welfare consequences

J. Hernandez-Castro; A. Cartwright; E. Cartwright

doi:10.1098/rsos.190023

An economic analysis of ransomware and its welfare consequences

J. Hernandez-Castro, A. Cartwright, E. Cartwright

School of Economics, Finance and Accounting

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

165 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

We present in this work an economic analysis of ransomware, a relatively new form of cyber-enabled extortion. We look at how the illegal gains of the criminals will depend on the strategies they use, examining uniform pricing and price discrimination. We also explore the welfare costs to society of such strategies. In addition, we present the results of a pilot survey which demonstrate proof of concept in evaluating the costs of ransomware attacks. We discuss at each stage whether the different strategies we analyse have been encountered already in existing malware, and the likelihood of them being implemented in the future. We hope this work will provide some useful insights for predicting how ransomware may evolve in the future.

Original language	English
Article number	190023
Number of pages	14
Journal	Royal Society Open Science
Volume	7
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190023
Publication status	Published - 4 Mar 2020

Bibliographical note

Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funder

This project has received funding from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme,under grant agreement no. 700326 (RAMSES project). The authors also want to thank EPSRC for project EP/P011772/1,on the EconoMical, PsycHologicAl and Societal Impact of RanSomware (EMPHASIS), which supported this work

Keywords

Cyber-security
Price discrimination
Ransom
Ransomware
Willingness to pay

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General

Access to Document

10.1098/rsos.190023Licence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 1.16 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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An economic analysis of ransomware and its welfare consequences

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funder

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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