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Publicação
Understanding Malware-as-a-Service: The Role of Cloud Computing and Technology Opportunism in Cyber Threat Evolution
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| 1.33 MB | Adobe PDF |
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Resumo(s)
Cloud computing has transformed the delivery of malicious tools through the rise of Malware as a Service, a subscription-based cybercrime model that automates attacks and reduces the technical expertise required to conduct them. While prior research has examined cloud security and the technical evolution of MaaS, little is known about why individuals perceive cloud infrastructures as actionable opportunities for misuse and how these perceptions translate into malicious intentions. This study addresses this gap by integrating Cloud Computing Technological Opportunism with Cybersecurity Routine Activity Theory to explain how offenders evaluate cloud-based environments, form motivation, and develop intentions to misuse MaaS tools. Using survey data from 377 participants and analysing the structural model with SmartPLS, the results show that technological opportunism shapes offender cognition across all three C-RAT mechanisms: it increases offender motivation and perceived target suitability while reducing perceived guardianship capability. These three mechanisms fully mediate the effect of cloud opportunism on malicious intention, indicating that cloud affordances influence behavior only when filtered through offenders’ cognitive assessments of opportunity and control. The analysis further demonstrates that these pathways are conditioned by individual predispositions, including self-control, moral beliefs, hacking efficacy, usability perceptions, and perceived deterrence, identifying boundary conditions that explain when cloud-enabled opportunities become criminogenic. Theoretically, the study reframes cyber offending in cloud environments as a socio-technical process in which distributed technological affordances and heterogeneous psychological filters jointly shape malicious intent. Practically, the findings highlight the need for cloud governance and security interventions that alter perceptual opportunity structures, strengthen visible guardianship, reduce usability of attack interfaces, and increase friction in MaaS-enabled workflows.
Descrição
Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Business Intelligence
Palavras-chave
Cloud Computing Malware-as-a-Service Technology-Based Opportunism Cybersecurity Routine Activities Theory Offender Motivation