Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2017

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.

Keywords

Internet censorship, Hacker forum, Cyber security, Text mining

Discipline

Information Security

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2010 HICSS-50: January 4-7: Proceedings

First Page

5619

Last Page

5628

ISBN

9780998133102

Identifier

10.24251/HICSS.2017.677

Publisher

AIS

City or Country

Atlanta, GA

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2017.677

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