Cyber Crime

INTRODUCTION

Today an increasing number of companies are connecting to the Internet to

support sales activities or to provide their employees and customers with faster
information and services. The virtual world has taken over the real one, E-
business and E-commerce, which are the new mantras and electronic transactions
and dominate the overall business paradigm. This developing world of
information technology has a negative side effect. It has opened the door to
antisocial and criminal behavior. Cyber-crime is the latest and perhaps the most
complicated problem in the cyber world.

WHAT IS CYBER CRIME?

Cybercrimes are defined as: "Offences that are committed against individuals or
groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation
of the victim or cause physical or mental harm to the victim directly or indirectly,
using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet and mobile phones ".
Such crimes may threaten a nation’s security and financial health. Issues
surrounding these types of crime have become high-profile, particularly those

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surrounding cracking, copyright infringement, child pornography, and child
grooming.

REASONS FOR CYBER CRIME:

 Capacity to store data in comparatively small space-

The computer has unique characteristic of storing data in a very small
space. This affords to remove or derive information either through
physical or virtual medium makes it much easier.
 Negligence-
Negligence is very closely connected with human conduct. It is therefore
very probable that while protecting the computer system there might be
any negligence, which in turn provides a cyber-criminal to gain access and
control over the computer.
 Loss of evidence-
Loss of evidence is a very common & obvious problem as all the data are
routinely destroyed. Further collection of data outside the territorial extent
also paralyses this system of crime investigation.

CYBER CRIMINALS:

 Children and adolescents between the age group of 6 – 18 years –

The simple reason for this type of behaviour pattern in children is seen
mostly due to the inquisitiveness to know and explore the things

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  Organised hackers-
These kinds of hackers are mostly organised together to fulfil certain
objective. The reason may be to fulfil their political bias, fundamentalism,
etc.
 Professional hackers / crackers –
Their work is motivated by the colour of money.These kinds of hackers
are employed to hack the site of the rivals and get credible, reliable and
valuable information.

MODE AND MANNER OF COMMITING CYBER CRIME:

 Unauthorized access to computer systems or networks / Hacking-

This kind of offence is normally referred as hacking in the generic sense.
However the framers of the information technology act 2000 have no
where used this term so to avoid any confusion we would not
interchangeably use the word hacking for ‘unauthorized access’ as the
latter has wide connotation.
 Email bombing-
This kind of activity refers to sending large numbers of mail to the victim,
which may be an individual or a company or even mail servers there by
ultimately resulting into crashing.
 Internet time thefts-

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 Normally in these kinds of thefts the Internet surfing hours of the victim
are used up by another person. This is done by gaining access to the login
ID and the password.

CLASSIFICATION:

Cyber crime can be classified in to 4 major categories as;

(A) Cyber crime against Individual

 Email spoofing:
A spoofed email is one in which e-mail header is forged so that mail
appears to originate from one source but actually has been sent from
another source
 Spamming:
Spamming means sending multiple copies of unsolicited mails or mass e-
mails such as chain letters.

(B) Cyber crime Against Property

 Credit Card Fraud :

Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed
using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent
source of funds in a transaction.

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  Internet time theft:
The usage of the Internet hours by an unauthorized person which is
actually paid by another person.
(C) Cyber crime Against Organization

 Denial of Service:
When Internet server is flooded with continuous bogus requests so as to
denying legitimate users to use the server or to crash the server.

 Virus attack:
A computer virus is a computer program that can infect other computer
programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a (possibly
evolved) copy of it.

(D) Cyber crime Against Society

 Forgery :
Currency notes, revenue stamps, mark sheets etc can be forged using
computers and high quality scanners and printers.

 Web Jacking :
Hackers gain access and control over the website of another, even they
change the content of website for fulfilling political objective or for
money.

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PREVENTION OF CYBER CRIME:

Prevention is always better than cure. It is always better to take certain

precaution while operating the net. A should make them his part of cyber
life

 never send your credit card number to any site that is not secured,
to guard against frauds.

 always use latest and update antivirus software to guard against

virus attacks.

 always keep back up volumes so that one may not suffer data loss
in case of virus contamination

 use of firewalls may be beneficial.