Hanna Yarovenko

University Carlos III of Madrid,

Madrid, Spain;

Sumy State University,

Sumy, Ukraine

E-mail: hyaroven@inf.uc3m.es

ORCID 0000-0002-8760-6835

Socio-economic profiles of countries - cybercrime victims

Agnieszka Lopatka

Department of Economics, 

Institute of Economics and Finance, 

University of Szczecin, Poland

E-mail: agnieszka.lopatka@usz.edu.pl

ORCID 0000-0001-9775-640X

Tetyana Vasilyeva

Sumy State University,

Sumy, Ukraine

E-mail: tavasilyeva@biem.sumdu.edu.ua

ORCID 0000-0003-0635-7978

Imre Vida

Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary

info@vidaimre.com

ORCID 0000-0001-8089-9703

Abstract. The article analyses socio-economic profiles of countries that are victims of cybercrimes due to attacks by malicious programs and viruses spread through email applications, vulnerabilities of information systems and computer networks. The study is based on two hypotheses. The first is that powerful countries with significant global influence are both the cybercrime initiators and cybercrime victims to a greater extent than those with weak leverage. The second hypothesis is based on the fact that the level of socio-economic development of countries can be an indirect motivation for cyber criminals to commit mass cyberattacks. The proposed hypotheses were proved using cluster analysis based on the k-means and silhouette methods for the data from 93 countries. It formed 12 groups of countries based on the cyberattack volume on email applications and networks.

Using the Farrar-Glauber test, the research revealed that identified vulnerabilities in information systems highly correlated with other factors. Thus, this factor was eliminated from the data set. An associative analysis was used to form a profile of the victim countries. It identified common socio-economic characteristics for each group and developed the rules of cause-and-effect relationships for them. The cluster analysis results confirm the first hypothesis that the most powerful countries, such as the USA, China, Germany, France, and others, are both victims of cyberattacks and their initiators. The analysis of profiles of countries’ clusters based on the associative rules fully confirmed the second hypothesis.

Received: January, 2023

1st Revision: March, 2023

Accepted: June, 2023

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2023/16-2/11

JEL Classification: C38, F01, H56

Keywords: cybercrime, cyberattack, cyberwar, socio-economic development, cluster analysis, silhouette method, association analysis