Cybercrimeology

This research is going places: Cyberspace topology and online offender mobility

Episode Summary

Where do cybercriminals go when they go online? Dr Asier Moneva returns to Cybercrimeology to discuss how defining places in cyberspace might help us understand the journeys offenders make. We talk about why defining a cyber place is trickier than it sounds, how researchers can track and visualize movement online and what this approach could mean for cybercrime prevention and detection.

Episode Notes

• Asier's interest in the geometry of crime began during his PhD, when he noticed that research on cybercrime often drew on routine activities and rational choice perspectives but paid comparatively little attention to the places where crime occurs. His earlier mentor, a police officer, also influenced his interest in applying research to practical problems.
• Defining a place is not necessarily straightforward, even in the physical world. Asier explains why researchers need clear boundaries and operational definitions to make places measurable and comparable.
• Drawing on geography, computer science and environmental criminology, Asier and his colleagues developed five criteria for identifying cyber places: software, purpose-specific, interactive, independent and encapsulated. These characteristics distinguish cyber places from elements such as networks or physical infrastructure.
• Defining cyber places provides a unit of analysis that researchers can use to examine crime concentration, the convergence of offenders and targets and movement between different online environments.
• Unlike physical movement, moving between cyber places can happen almost instantly. Asier explains how attention can help determine where someone is online, including situations where a person might occupy two cyber places simultaneously.
• The researchers used a capture-the-flag hacking exercise with monitored computers to record participants' activities, including their use of applications and websites. These observations provided a way of examining sequences of behaviour as journeys through cyber places.
• Asier discusses different ways of visualizing cybercrime journeys, including directed networks and stepwise timelines. More complex three-dimensional representations are possible but may be harder to interpret.
• Research on human cyber dynamics suggests that people tend to revisit familiar online places rather than continually explore new ones. Asier also explains how components of traditional crime journeys can be adapted to online movement, although some, such as geographical angles, do not translate easily.
• Two potential applications of cybercrime journey research are identifying places where interventions might disrupt crime and detecting suspicious patterns of online behaviour. Asier emphasizes that these possibilities require further testing and raises concerns about the potential use of behavioural monitoring for profiling and surveillance.

About our guest:

Dr Asier Moneva

https://asiermoneva.com/

https://nscr.nl/en/medewerker/asier-moneva/

Papers or resources mentioned in this episode:

Moneva, A., Ruiter, S., & Bernasco, W. (2026). The topology of cyberspace and cybercrime journeys: A framework for analyzing online offender mobility. Crime Science, 15, Article 28.

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-026-00294-w

Bernasco, W. (2014). Crime journeys: Patterns of offender mobility. Oxford Handbooks Online.

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935383.013.49

Other:

Asier's previous appearances on Cybercrimeology:

The Open Science Revolution: Building Trust with Transparency (2024)

https://cybercrimeology.com/episodes/the-open-science-revolution-building-trust-with-transparency

Environmental Choices: Advancing the Research of Cybercrime Prevention (2022)

https://cybercrimeology.com/episodes/environmental-choices-advancing-the-research-of-cybercrime-prevention