Cyber Crime: The Basics

A Cyber Crime may be defined as an offence that is committed against individuals, organization, or the society at large 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 (Chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups). To put it into another words, any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrument, target or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime. So in a cyber crime, the computer is either a tool or the target or both. With increased usage of internet, issues surrounding cyber crime have become high-profile, particularly those surrounding cracking, copyright infringement, including privacy problems when confidential information is lost or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise. Thus, such crimes may not only harass the people but would also threaten a nations security and financial health. In-line with Cyber Crime there is one more term called as Cyber Warfare. It refers to the activity crossing international borders and involving the interests of at least one nation. The international criminal court that takes decisions related to such activities. Coming back to cyber crime, there are a number of ways in which cyber crimes are committed, such as: Unauthorized access to computer/ computer system/ computer networks (Hacking) Theft of information contained in the electronic form E-mail bombing: sending a large number of emails resulting in crashing Data diddling: changing raw data before the computer processes it, and changing the data back to original form after processing Salami attacks: alteration of data, and the alteration is so small that it goes unnoticed (typically used in financial cyber crimes) Denial of service: flooding victim with requests resulting in crashing Virus/worm attacks: virus alters or deletes data, and travels from system to system, and worm makes copies of itself and eats-up memory space resulting in crashing Logic bombs: event dependent programs that damage the system post triggering Trojan attacks: unauthorized program that gains control over another system by posing as an authorized program Internet time thefts: one person stealing other persons internet time for usage by gaining access to login-id and password Web jacking: taking unauthorized control and access of a website

Some examples of cyber crime: Harassment via e-mails Cyber-stalking Defamation E-mail spoofing (make believe that the email is sent from an email-id when it has actually been sent from an altogether different one) Computer vandalism (deliberate destruction of property) Distribution of pirated software Copyright infringement Trademark and service mark violation Computer source code theft Cyber terrorism: the premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, in cyber space, with the intention to further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives, or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives (hate websites/mails, attacks on sensitive computer networks) Fraud & Cheating (credit card crimes, contractual crimes, offering jobs)

Now that the idea of cyber crime is clear, let us look at some of the preventive measures that we may take to keep ourselves safe from being victims of cyber crime. The following things should be taken care of while using the internet: Do not disclose any information pertaining to yourself on the internet to strangers to prevent cyber stalking Do not send photographs online, particularly to strangers/online friend as those photos may be misused in a number of ways Always use latest antivirus and update the antivirus software frequently to prevent virus attacks Always take data back-up, this will come-in handy at the time of data loss post virus contamination Do not send credit/debit card information to a website that is not secured, as it might result in theft/fraud Preferably use a security program that gives control over the cookies and sends information back to the site, leaving cookies unguarded might be fatal Watch traffic and check any irregularity on the site by putting host-based intrusion detection devices on servers (for website owners) Use firewalls Make sure and keep web servers running public sites physically separate from internal corporate network

Last but not at all the least, if there might b n ways to commit a cyber crime, we need to take n+1 measures to ensure our own cyber security.

Be safe, happy net-surfing!!