Threat Actor Motivations
There is a difference between the intent of the attack and the motivation that fuels the attack
- Threat actors intent
- Specific objective or goal that a threat actor is aiming to achieve through their attack
- Threat actors motivation
- Underlying reasons or driving forces that pushes a threat actor to carry out their attack
Different motivations behind threat actors
- Data exfiltration
- Unauthorized transfer of data from a computer
- Financial Gain
- Achieved through various means, such as ransomware attacks or through banking trojans that allow them to steal financial information in order to gain unauthorized access to victims’ back accounts
- Blackmail
- Attacker obtains sensitive or compromising information about an individual or an organization and threatens to release this information to the public unless certain demands are met
- Service Disruption
- Some threat actors aim to disrupt the services of various organizations, either to cause chaos, make a political statement, or demand a ransom
- Philosophical or Political Beliefs
- Attacks that are conducted due to the philosophical or political beliefs of the attackers is known as hacktivism
- Common motivation for a specific type of threat actor known as a hacktivist
- Ethical Reasons
- Contrary to malicious threat actors, ethical hackers, also known as Authorized hackers, are motivation by a desire to improve security
- Revenge
- It can also be a motivation for a threat actor that wants to target an entity that they believe has wronged them in some way
- Disruption or Chaos
- Creating and spreading malware to launching sophisticated cyberattacks against the critical infrastructure in a populated city
- Espionage
- Spying on individuals, organizations, or nations to gather sensitive or classified information
- War
- Cyber warfare can be used to disrupt a country’s infrastructure, compromise its national security, and to cause economic damage