Economic Modeling of Restricting the cryptocurrency market on ransomware attacks

Subject Areas : Labor and Demographic Economics

Mehran Garmehi ¹ , Sarah Rahimi Devin ²

1 - Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Engineering, University of Bojnord, Iran
2 - BSc. of Information Technology, Bojnord, Iran

Received: 2020-08-15 Accepted : 2021-02-08 Published : 2020-09-22

Keywords: Crypto currency, E41, JEL Classification: C51, Cyber Attack, Economic Modeling, Economic Mechanism, E42 Keywords: Ransom ware,

Abstract :

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of policies restricting access to the cryptocurrency market on the process of countering ransomware attacks. To this purpose, by reflecting on the details of a ransomware attack, we model the economy of these attacks and examine the impact of economic variables on the damage caused by them, and through the data obtained from a field study, it has been shown that the relationship between attackers' profits and the damage caused by the attack is non-linear and has local maximums and minimums, and any countermeasures in response to these attacks must be carefully considered in the consequences from an economic point of view.The results show that in a ransomware attack, an attacker may achieve almost the same profit by setting several different amounts of ransom and inflicting several different amounts of total damage. Thus, it is demonstrated that it is important not to adopt policies that may lead the attacker to demand the amounts of ransom that cause further damage.

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