Is the internet for porn? An insight into the online adult industry

                        The online adult industry is among the most profitable business       branches on the Internet, and its web sites attract large       amounts of visitors and traffic. Nevertheless, no study has       yet characterized the industry’s economical and securityrelated       structure. As cyber-criminals are motivated by financial       incentives, a deeper understanding and identification       of the economic actors and interdependencies in the       online adult business is important for analyzing securityrelated       aspects of this industry.       In this paper, we provide a survey of the different economic       roles that adult web sites assume, and highlight their       economic and technical features. We provide insights into       security flaws and potential points of interest for cybercriminals.       We achieve this by applying a combination of       automatic and manual analysis techniques to investigate the       economic structure of the online adult industry and its business       cases. Furthermore, we also performed several experiments       to gain a better understanding of the flow of visitors       to these sites and the related cash flow, and report on the       lessons learned while operating adult web sites on our own.

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