New Hackonomy—The Alternative Platform Economy

Hacking has become a shadow economy with a global effect. State and non-state actors are taking advantage of it; the former computer nerd in a hoodie is a thing of the past, the industry has become significantly professionalized. Business models and organizational forms of the legal economy are being transferred to the world of cybercrime. Its activities take on diverse forms. They range from traditional methods of fraud and money theft, as well as espionage, sabotage, and extortion, to newer forms such as cyber mercenaries and crime-as-a-service. Cryptocurrencies prove to be both the mainstays of the new hackonomy and the objects of their attacks. Activists of all stripes have discovered hacking as a tool for building a better world and have had varying degrees of success with it. Hacking is also increasingly proving to be a danger to our private living environment, so that everyone can be directly affected by it there as well.