Typology of Cyber Crimes

1: a doctrine of theological types; especially : one holding that things in Christian belief are prefigured or symbolized by things in the Old Testament

2: study of or analysis or classification based on types or categories.

Cybercrime is defined as a crime in which a computeris the object of the crime (hacking, phishing,spamming) or is used as a tool to commit an offense(child pornography, hate crimes).

Cybercriminals may use computer technology toaccess personal information, business trade secrets,or use the Internet for exploitive or maliciouspurposes. Criminals can also use computers forcommunication and document or data storage.

Criminals who perform these illegal activities areoften referred to as hackers.

Cybercrime may also be referred to as computer crime.

Types of Cyber Crimes Can be Classified into the Categories which we will see

further.

Cyber crimes are broadly categorized into three categories, namely crime against

1. Individual2. Property3. Government

This type of cyber crime can be in the form of:1. Cyber stalking,2. Distributing pornography,3. Trafficking and Grooming.

Today, law enforcement agencies aretaking this category of cyber crime veryseriously and are joining forcesinternationally to reach and arrest theperpetrators.

Just like in the real world where a criminal can steal and rob, even in the cyber world criminals resort to stealing and robbing.

In this case, they can steal a person’s bank details and siphon off money; misuse the credit card to make numerous purchases online; run a scam to get naïve people to part with their hard earned money; use malicious software to gain access to an organization’s website or disrupt the systems of the organization.

The malicious software can also damage software and hardware, just like vandals damage property in the offline world.

Although not as common as the other twocategories, crimes against a government arereferred to as cyber terrorism. If successful, thiscategory can wreak havoc and cause panic amongstthe civilian population.

In this category, criminals hack governmentwebsites, military websites or circulate propaganda.

The perpetrators can be terrorist outfits orunfriendly governments of other nations.

It is important to note that a computer,Internet or computer technology has to beinvolved, and when the use of any of thefollowing techniques or activities is made tocarry out a crime or illegal activity – only thencan it be classified as a Cybercrime.

This is a type of crime wherein a person’scomputer is broken into so that his personal orsensitive information can be accessed.

In the United States, hacking is classified as afelony and punishable as such. This is differentfrom ethical hacking, which many organizationsuse to check their Internet security protection.

In hacking, the criminal uses a variety ofsoftware to enter a person’s computer and theperson may not be aware that his computer isbeing accessed from a remote location.

This crime occurs when a person violatescopyrights and downloads music, movies,games and software. There are even peersharing websites which encourage softwarepiracy and many of these websites are nowbeing targeted by the FBI. Today, the justicesystem is addressing this cyber crime andthere are laws that prevent people fromillegal downloading.

A 44 YEAR OLD PUBLISHING

EXECUTIVE NAMED CLAIRE MILLER WAS

HARASSED BY STRANGERS WHO

WERE RESPONDING TO VERGING-ON-PORNOGRAPHIC

PROMISES SOMEONE HAD

MADE IN HER NAME ONLINE. THESE

POSTINGS INCLUDED HER

HOME ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE

NUMBER

This is a kind of online harassmentwherein the victim is subjected to abarrage of online messages andemails.

Typically, these stalkers know theirvictims and instead of resorting tooffline stalking, they use theInternet to stalk.

However, if they notice that cyberstalking is not having the desiredeffect, they begin offline stalkingalong with cyber stalking to makethe victims’ lives more miserable.

This has become a major problem withpeople using the Internet for cashtransactions and banking services. In thiscyber crime, a criminal accesses data about aperson’s bank account, credit cards, SocialSecurity, debit card and other sensitiveinformation to siphon money or to buy thingsonline in the victim’s name. It can result inmajor financial losses for the victim and evenspoil the victim’s credit history.

These are Internet-based software orprograms that are used to disrupt a network.The software is used to gain access to asystem to steal sensitive information or dataor causing damage to software present in thesystem.

This is also a type of cyber crime whereincriminals solicit minors via chat rooms for thepurpose of child pornography. The FBI hasbeen spending a lot of time monitoring chatrooms frequented by children with the hopesof reducing and preventing child abuse andsoliciting.

This is one of the detestable malware-basedattacks. Ransomware enters your computernetwork and encrypts your files using public-key encryption, and unlike other malware thisencryption key remains on the hacker’sserver. Attacked users are then asked to payhuge ransoms to receive this private key.

DDoS attacks are used to make an online serviceunavailable and bring it down, by bombarding oroverwhelming it with traffic from multiplelocations and sources.

Large networks of infected computers, calledBotnets are developed by planting malware onthe victim computers.

The idea is normally to draw attention to theDDOS attack, and allow the hacker to hack intoa system.

Extortion and blackmail could be the othermotivations.

Botnets are networks of compromisedcomputers, controlled by remote attackers inorder to perform such illicit tasks as sendingspam or attacking other computers.

Computer Bots can also be used act likemalware and carry out malicious tasks. Thencan be used to assemble a network ofcomputers and then compromise them.

Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire sensitive information like usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising as a trustworthy source.

Phishing is carried out through emails or by luring the users to enter personal information through fake websites.

Criminals often use websites that have a look and feel of some popular website, which makes the users feel safe to enter their details there.

Attacks are increasing, with financial services accounting for over 93% of impersonated or hijacked brands through bogus websites and emails. Almost all of the UK’s high street banks have been affected by phishing.

Vishing is the criminal practice of using social engineering and Voice over IP (VoIP) to gain access to private personal and financial information from the public for the purpose of financial reward.

The term is a combination of “Voice" and phishing. Vishing exploits the publics trust in landline telephone

services. Vishing is typically used to steal credit card numbers

or other information used in identity theft schemes fromMonday, September 24, 2012 individuals.

VIRUS

Viruses are programs thatattach themselves to acomputer or a file.

They then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network.

WORMS

Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to.

They merely makefunctional copies ofthemselves and do thisrepeatedly till they eat upall the available space on acomputer's memory.

These attacks occur when a person or a group of people try to prevent a internet site from functioning effectively either temporarily or on a long term basis.

Apart from inculcating safe browsinghabits, maintain good system hygiene. Avoidleaving Digital Footprints.

You must secure your Windows system with afully updated operating system and installedsoftware, and ensure that you install a goodInternet Security Software to protect yourWindows computer.

Using the Enhanced Mitigation ExperienceToolkit on Windows is a great way to protectyour system against zero-day attacks.

Although it will not be possible to eliminate allthe Cyber crime from the world, because newcrimes keep cropping up every day, it is possibleto keep a check on them.

History is the witness that no government hassucceeded in totally eliminating crime from theglobe.

The only possible step is to make people awareof their rights and duties, and further making theapplication of the laws more stringent to checkcrime

Stay safe …

it’s a bad world out there!

…Advocate Gaurav M Patel