Notes for Cyber Crime

What is Cyber Crime?

Before starting our discussion first we must know what “Cyber crime” is and what are the impacts and the benefits the “Cyber Criminals” gain from such activities.

Definition of Cyber Crime:

“Any crime that involves a computer and a network is called a "Computer Crime"

For this purpose a computer may have been used to commit such crime or simply a computer may be the target.

Another term called “Internet crime” refers to criminal activities for exploiting the internet. These crimes include and are not limited to identity theft, threatening a nation’s security, copyright infringement and child pornography. These crimes have become a threat to individual privacy, where confidential data, individual’s identity or photos and videos etc. is stolen or intercepted by the attacker.

In “Cyber Crime” such as identity theft, financial theft, espionage mostly non-state agents and government organizations are involved.

For example, in the latest turn of events the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States was held responsible for intercepting and spying on millions of online users.

Or in another example, the Chinese hackers were involved in constantly hacking into Big US organizations and agencies like the latest attack on the New York Times in January 2013.

Such criminal activities carried out online involving nations and state missionary is known as “Cyber Warfare”.

Types of Cyber Crimes

1. Cyber Crimes against Persons

2. Cyber Crimes against Persons Property

3. Cyber Crimes against Government

4. Cyber Crimes against Society

The following are the description of all the types of Cyber Crimes.

1. Cyber Crimes against Persons

There are certain offences which affect the personality of individuals can be defined as:

1. Harassment via E-Mails: It is very common type of harassment through sending letters, attachments of files & folders i.e. via e-mails. At present harassment is common as usage of social sites i.e. Facebook, Twitter etc. increasing day by day.

2. Cyber-Stalking: It means expressed or implied a physical threat that creates fear through the use to computer technology such as internet, e-mail, phones, text messages, webcam, websites or videos.

3. Dissemination of Obscene Material: It includes Indecent exposure/ Pornography (basically child pornography), hosting of web site containing these prohibited materials. These obscene matters may cause harm to the mind of the adolescent and tend to deprave or corrupt their mind.

4. Defamation: It is an act of imputing any person with intent to lower down the dignity of the person by hacking his mail account and sending some mails with using vulgar language to unknown persons mail account.

5. Hacking: It means unauthorized control/access over computer system and act of hacking completely destroys the whole data as well as computer programmes. Hackers usually hacks telecommunication and mobile network.

6. Cracking: It is amongst the gravest cyber crimes known till date. It is a dreadful feeling to know that a stranger has broken into your computer systems without your knowledge and consent and has tampered with precious confidential data and information.

7. E-Mail Spoofing: A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, which misrepresents its origin. It shows it’s origin to be different from which actually it originates.

8. SMS Spoofing: Spoofing is a blocking through spam which means the unwanted uninvited messages. Here a offender steals identity of another in the form of mobile phone number and sending SMS via internet and receiver gets the SMS from the mobile phone number of the victim. It is very serious cyber crime against any individual.

9.Carding: It means false ATM cards i.e. Debit and Credit cards used by criminals for their monetary benefits through withdrawing money from the victim’s bank account mala-fidely. There is always unauthorized use of ATM cards in this type of cyber crimes.

10. Cheating & Fraud: It means the person who is doing the act of cyber crime i.e. stealing password and data storage has done it with having guilty mind which leads to fraud and cheating.

11. Child Pornography: It involves the use of computer networks to create, distribute, or access materials that sexually exploit underage children.

12. Assault by Threat: refers to threatening a person with fear for their lives or lives of their families through the use of a computer network i.e. E-mail, videos or phones.

2. Cyber Crimes against Persons Property:

As there is rapid growth in the international trade where businesses and consumers are increasingly using computers to create, transmit and to store information in the electronic form instead of traditional paper documents. There are certain offences which affects person’s properties which are as follows:

1. Intellectual Property Crimes: Intellectual property consists of a bundle of rights. Any unlawful act by which the owner is deprived completely or partially of his rights is an offence. The common form of IPR violation may be said to be software piracy, infringement of copyright, trademark, patents, designs and service mark violation, theft of computer source code, etc.

2. Cyber Squatting: It means where two persons claim for the same Domain Name either by claiming that they had registered the name first on by right of using it before the other or using something similar to that previously. For example two similar names i.e. www.yahoo.com and www.yaahoo.com.

3. Cyber Vandalism: Vandalism means deliberately destroying or damaging property of another. Thus cyber vandalism means destroying or damaging the data when a network service is stopped or disrupted. It may include within its purview any kind of physical harm done to the computer of any person. These acts may take the form of the theft of a computer, some part of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer.

4. Hacking Computer System: Hacktivism attacks those included Famous Twitter, blogging platform by unauthorized access/control over the computer. Due to the hacking activity there will be loss of data as well as computer. Also research especially indicates that those attacks were not mainly intended for financial gain too and to diminish the reputation of particular person or company.

5. Transmitting Virus: Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it. Worm attacks plays major role in affecting the computerize system of the individuals.

6. Cyber Trespass: It means to access someone’s computer without the right authorization of the owner and does not disturb, alter, misuse, or damage data or system by using wireless internet connection.

7. Internet Time Thefts: Basically, Internet time theft comes under hacking. It is the use by an unauthorized person, of the Internet hours paid for by another person. The person who gets access to someone else’s ISP user ID and password, either by hacking or by gaining access to it by illegal means, uses it to access the Internet without the other person’s knowledge. You can identify time theft if your Internet time has to be recharged often, despite infrequent usage.

3. Cyber Crimes against Government:

There are certain offences done by group of persons intending to threaten the international governments by using internet facilities. It includes:

1.Cyber Terrorism: Cyber terrorism is a major burning issue in the domestic as well as global concern. The common form of these terrorist attacks on the Internet is by distributed denial of service attacks, hate websites and hate e-mails, attacks on sensitive computer networks etc. Cyber terrorism activities endanger the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.

2. Cyber Warfare: It refers to politically motivated hacking to conduct sabotage and espionage. It is a form of information warfare sometimes seen as analogous to conventional warfare although this analogy is controversial for both its accuracy and its political motivation.

3. Distribution of pirated software: It means distributing pirated software from one computer to another intending to destroy the data and official records of the government.

4. Possession of Unauthorized Information: It is very easy to access any information by the terrorists with the aid of internet and to possess that information for political, religious, social, ideological objectives.

4. Cyber Crimes against Society at large:

An unlawful act done with the intention of causing harm to the cyberspace will affect large number of persons. This offence includes

1.Child Pornography: It involves the use of computer networks to create, distribute, or access materials that sexually exploit underage children. It also includes activities concerning indecent exposure and obscenity.

2. Cyber Trafficking: It may be trafficking in drugs, human beings, arms weapons etc. which affects large number of persons. Trafficking in the cyberspace is also a gravest crime.

3. Online Gambling: Online fraud and cheating is one of the most lucrative businesses that are growing today in the cyber space. There are many cases that have come to light are those pertaining to credit card crimes, contractual crimes, offering jobs, etc.

4.Financial Crimes: This type of offence is common as there is rapid growth in the users of networking sites and phone networking where culprit will try to attack by sending bogus mails or messages through internet. Ex: Using credit cards by obtaining password illegally.

5.Forgery: It means to deceive large number of persons by sending threatening mails as online business transactions are becoming the habitual need of today’s life style.

What is a Hacker?

“A hacker is someone who breaks into computer or a computer network”.

                Hackers are motivated to commit such crimes either for financial gains, protesting against any political activity or just to challenge the limits of his skills and expertise in the field. Not all hackers show theirs skills in performing criminal activities. Some hackers look for loophole & backdoors in software and websites, and if any vulnerabilities are found they report back to the owner or the authorities. One such example happened recently when a young Palestinian hacker found a bug in Facebook and he reported that bug to the authorities. But unfortunately he wasn’t given any credit or reward for showing his skills and good intentions.

                That’s how experts distinguish Hackers from Crackers. A hacker is someone who carries out such activities with good intentions and a cracker do the same but his main objective is to cause harm.