Examining the Characteristics That Differentiate Jihadi-Associated Cyberattacks Using Routine Activities Theory

Abstract

This study applies routine activities theory to determine whether the characteristics of jihadi-inspired web defacements in the United States vary from all other defacements performed against IP addresses hosted within the United States from 2012 to 2016. We focus on target suitability variables and use a sample of over 2.2 million defacements reported by the independent website Zone-H. We estimated a binary logistic regression model and found that jihadi cyberattacks were rare among all the defacements performed in this 5-year period. Additionally, these findings demonstrated jihadists were more likely to target organizational websites and utilized specific attack methods compared to all other defacers. We contextualize our findings and outline a number of avenues for future research.