The dark side of the Internet: Attacks, costs and responses

The Internet and Web technologies have originally been developed assuming an ideal world where all users are honorable. However, the dark side has emerged and bedeviled the world. This includes spam, malware, hacking, phishing, denial of service attacks, click fraud, invasion of privacy, defamation, frauds, violation of digital property rights, etc. The responses to the dark side of the Internet have included technologies, legislation, law enforcement, litigation, public awareness efforts, etc. In this paper, we explore and provide taxonomies of the causes and costs of the attacks, and types of responses to the attacks. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.