Recent measurements of the Windows code-signing certificate ecosystem have highlighted various forms of abuse that allow malware authors to produce malicious code carrying valid digital signatures. However, the underground trade that allows miscreants to acquire such certificates is not well understood. In this paper, we illuminate two aspects of this trade. First, we investigate 4 leading vend...

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper evaluates the impact of a program of bureaucracy simplification and tax reduction on formality among Brazilian microenterprises — the SIMPLES program. We document an increase of 13 percentage points in formal licensing among retail firms created after the program when compared to firms in ineligible sectors. The impact on retailers is robust to a series of tests...

With an increasing pervasiveness, prevalence and severity of cybercrimes, various metrics, measures and statistics have been developed and used to measure various aspects of this phenomenon. Cybercrime-related data, metrics, and information, however, pose important and difficult dilemmas regarding the issues of reliability, validity, comparability and practical utility. While many of the issues...

The involvement of Caribbean youth in drug distribution (marijuana from the mid-1960s to 1981; cocaine hydrochloride powder and crack from 1981 to 1987, the time of writing) throughout the Circum-Caribbean area and in North America is described. Social, economic, and cultural outcomes of these engagements are highlighted, and the relationship between the underground economy of drugs and the cor...

At the beginning of the 21 st Century, before the power of online social networking became apparent, several studies speculated about the likely structure of organised cybercrime (Mann and Sutton 1998; Brenner 2002). In the light of new data on cybercriminal organisations, this paper sets out to revisit their claims. In collaboration with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), this paper ex...