Timothy Gutmann

Ingram
UWRT-1102
16 Mar 2015

Traditional Research Paper

In the past decade cyber-crime has become an increasing problem due to the
exponential growth of technology year over year, combined with the relatively
cheap cost of producing and procuring such. The financial impact of this problem to
consumers is roughly 113 billion dollars, and cost the corporate sector even more.
Up until recently we have generally put the liability of this squarely on the shoulders
of individual people for if their information is stolen or compromised. Is it feasible
though to provide themselves with adequate protection in terms of time, money and
accessibility? The current law puts the perpetrator as the sole person responsible
for the crime, and any damages caused due to their unlawful act. More times than
not though financial assets are rendered as unrecoverable, and any additional
damages are unable to be reversed. In addition to this the culture surrounding this
problem has become more that of a reactive response to this problem rather than a
proactive one. This is a serious problem because the impact of a cyber-attack can
range anywhere from stealing your personal information from on-line, all the way to
shutting down our power infrastructure. This is why there must be a shift in how we
view and protect from cyber-crime, in addition to some changes in current
legislation surrounding this.
The first part to understanding the problem is actually understanding how a
device communicates on the internet, and what cyber-crime actually is. So focusing
on that first part, when you connect a device to the internet it assigned what is

called an IP address. The IP address is like a mailing address for your computer, and
determines how your internet service provider (i.e. Time warner) routes data
through there servers to your computer based on geographic location. When your
computer sends information to another device it is done by breaking that data into
small segments called packets. This process is similar to how computers
communicate on private networks and can be in succession to after information
travels through the internet to a private network. Now that the basics of how a
computer communicates have been established, we need to define cyber-crime.
Section 1030 in chapter 47 of title 18 of the U.S. Code defines cyber-crime as
intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized
access and thereby obtains information from any protected computer or
knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command,
and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization,
to a protected computer (U.S. Code Section 1030 Ch. 47 Title 18). What I have
quote from the U.S. Code is the coverall clause of the legislation that would
adequately cover everything that comes prior to those clauses. So what cyber
criminals do is use the data stream that your computer creates with other servers to
alter those packets of information to gain access to or recover information from
those packets of information. In addition software can be transferred to your device
via a download which secretly uses that data stream to transfer information to the
attacker.