APWG eCrime Researchers Probe The Rise of the Cybercriminal State

APWG eCrime 2026 Rise of the Criminal State: Dr. Louise Hurel, Dr. Alexander Seger, Dr. Brian Scavotto

Why governments turn to cybercrime to finance national objectives and how the international community can respond to sovereign states gone rogue

LISBON, PORTUGAL, November 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The convergence of organized cybercrime and state power will take center stage at the APWG’s Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (eCrime 2026) in Lisbon on November 5, as researchers present frameworks for parsing state motivations for pursuing cybercriminal enterprise — and countering it.

The session could not be more timely and its subject matter more consequential. Just days before researchers and industrial cybercrime responders convene at eCrime, new U.S. sanctions against North Korean government-run employment fraud networks have underscored a profound shift in the international cybercrime landscape: some governments are not just tolerating cybercriminal enterprises but actively exploiting them as instruments of national financing and strategic power.

The session, "The Rise of the Cybercriminal State," will feature Dr. Brian Scavotto of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Dr. Louise Marie Hurel of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London. Moderated by Dr. Alexander Seger, longtime leader of the Council of Europe's work on the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, the session will examine a fundamental challenge to conventional cybersecurity and international law enforcement: what happens when governments themselves become beneficiaries, sponsors, or direct perpetrators of financially motivated cybercrime?

“The convergence of organized crime and State power is not a new phenomenon. Experience shows that – in addition to following the money and seizing crime proceeds – a combination of measures is needed to deter rogue regimes,” said Seger.

The two presentations approach this emerging challenge from complementary directions. Scavotto examines the financial incentives that drive governments to tolerate or run criminal enterprises. Hurel examines how governments and alliances can assemble effective deterrence strategies when conventional cybersecurity defenses and law enforcement measures in isolation prove insufficient.

In his paper, "Filling the War Coffers: A Decision-Making Model for State-Sponsored Cybercrime," Scavotto challenges the conventional view that state-directed cyber operations are motivated principally by espionage, military disruption, or strategic advantage, examining cybercrime as a sustainable national financing strategy for generating revenue, circumventing sanctions, acquiring valuable intellectual property, and supporting military or other government priorities. Scavotto proposes a six-stage decision model through which governments may evaluate the feasibility, capabilities, attribution risks, potential retaliation, benefits, and repeatability of cybercriminal operations.

“When cybercrime becomes a source of state revenue, it changes the problem defenders and policymakers have to solve. We need to understand not only how these operations work, but why governments judge them worth the risk and what might change that calculation,” said Scavotto.

In "Beyond 'Cyber' in Deterrence: A Multilevel Framework," co-authored with Dr. Gareth Mott and published by RUSI in September 2026, Hurel offers a whole-of-government framework for integrating cyber and non-cyber instruments of statecraft, including economic pressure, sanctions, diplomatic coordination, collective action, capacity building, and carefully calibrated responses to adversarial behavior. For NATO, European Union members, and their partners, the framework proposes an approach to threats that cross conventional distinctions between criminal conduct, hostile state activity, and hybrid conflict.

"At a time where we see sustained grey zone aggression from Russia across Europe and budget squeezes for defence, states need to assess all tools at their disposal--beyond the ones that have so far been used–to maximise the costs being imposed against state affiliated actors conducting cyber operations against critical infrastructure and essential services. This is not about 'reinventing the wheel', but having a whole-of-government approach to achieving cyber deterrence outcomes,” said Hurel.

About APWG eCrime: The Symposium on Electronic Crime Research (APWG eCrime) was founded in 2006. Since then, what had been initially a technology-focused conference has incrementally expanded its focus to cover behavioral, social, economic, and legal / policy dimensions as well as technical aspects of cybercrime and cyber-physical crime. Hundreds of papers exploring these dimensions of cybercrime at APWG eCrime have been published by the IEEE <APWG | eCrime Research Papers> as well as by Taylor & Francis and the Association of Computing Machinery (in the very earliest years of the symposium). With its multi-disciplinary approach, APWG eCrime every year brings together the most heterogeneous community of counter-eCrime researchers and industrial stakeholders to confer over the latest research, and to foster collaborations between the leading investigators in this still nascent field of cybercrime studies.

Aimee Larsen Kirkpatrick
APWG
+1 808-282-9850
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