Exploring the impact of how criminals interact with cyber-networks - a mathematical modeling approach

Abstract

There is a growing interest in using mathematical models to understand crime dynamics, crime prevention, and detection. The past decade has experienced a relative reduction in conventional crimes, but this has been replaced by significant increases in cybercrime. We use a system of nonlinear differential equations to explore the impact of criminal location in relation to cyber networks on the amount of cybercrime. Using steady-state analysis and extensive numerical simulations, we find that the location of criminals relative to the network does not impact the system qualitatively although there are quantitative differences. Cyber networks that are more clustered are likely to experience greater levels of cybercrime but there is also a saturation effect that limits the level of victimisation as the number of criminals attempting to undertake crimes on a given network increases.