Cyber Crime Essay

SSI 3013 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN SCIENCE

TITLE: WHAT IS CYBER CRIME?

MEMBER’S NAME : HASNOR IZZATI BINTI CHE RAZALI [D20091035119] NOORIDAYU BT MOHAMED [D20091035077] NORHAMIDAH BT ROHANI [D20091035109] NOR SHARLIDA BT MOHAMAD JALAILUDIN [D20091035086] MOHAMAD ARIF BIN NASARUDDIN [D20091035123]

WHAT IS CYBER CRIME? Crime is a common word that we always heard in this globalization era. Crimes refer to any violation of law or the commission of an act forbidden by law. Crime and criminality have been associated with man since long time ago. There are different strategies practices by different countries to contend with crime. It is depending on their extent and nature. It can be concluded that a nation with high index of crime cases cannot grow or develop well. This is because crime is the direct opposite of development. It can contribute to negative impact in term of social and economic development. Cyber crime is a new type of crime that occurs in this Science and Technology years. There are a lot of definitions for cyber crime. According to Wikipidia.com cyber crime also known as computer crime that refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network. Cyber crime is defined as crimes committed on the internet using the computer as either a tool or a targeted victim. Besides that cyber crime can be defined as crimes committed on the internet using the computer as either a tool or a targeted victim (Joseph A E, 2006). Computer can be considers as a tool in cyber crime when the individual is the main target of cyber crime. But computer can be considers as target when the crime is directed to the computer. In addition, cyber crime also includes traditional crimes that been conducted with the access of Internet. For example hate crimes, telemarketing Internet fraud, identity theft, and credit card account thefts. In simple word, cybercrime can be defined as any violence action that been conducted by using computer or other devices with the access of internet. This action can give harmful effects to other.

Report made by authorities showed that our country involved in 2,123 of cyber crime cases during 2008 which is more than 100 per cent increase compared with 2007, but that rate was an incident and may not correlate with cyber crimes rates. Cyber Security Malaysia said, the number is not from the rate of cyber crimes analysis but only from the complaint they received. Furthermore, they said, they cannot analyze the actual statistic because police, Bank Negara, Securities Commission and Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) have their own statistics and they have not been able to collate these statistics to see the clearer image about cyber crimes.

There are many factors that causes the statistic of cyber crime cannot be detected or analyzed. First, the aggressive development of today’s technology making this crime is very difficult to be detected. Second, law enforcement officials lack of necessary technical expertise to deal with criminal activity. Third, once criminal activity has been detected many businessmen are reluctant to lodge a report because they afraid of adverse publicity, embarrassment, loss of public confidence, investor loss, or economic repercussions. Due to these factors, the actual number of cyber crime cases and the statistic of cyber crime in our country cannot be recorded accurately.

There are three major categories of cyber crimes which are crimes against the person, property and the government. The first category of cyber crimes is cyber crime against person. Cyber crime against person is included harassment via email or cyber-stalking. Cyber Stalking means following the moves of an individual's activity over internet. It can be done with the help

of many protocols available such at e- mail, chat rooms, user net groups while, harassment can be included sexual, racial, religious, or others. This crime usually happens to women and teenager. There is a case happened to a girl in Ahmedabad, Gujarat India. She was lured to a private place through cyber chat by a man with his friends, attempted to rape her. Luckily she was rescue by passersby that heard she cried she was rescued. Second category of cyber crimes is that of cybercrimes against all forms of property. These crimes include computer vandalism by transmission of harmful programmes to other computer through internet. The other example is cyber criminal can take the contents of individual bank account. One widespread method of getting people's bank account details is the money transfer email scam. People receive emails requesting help with transferring funds from another country. Hacking into company websites is property trespass, and stealing information is property theft. Internet time theft also one of the cyber crime against property. It is done by an authorized person in the usage of the internet hours which is actually paid by another person. The third category is cyber crimes against governments constitute another level of crime. Cyber terrorism is the most serious type of crime in this category. Hacking into a government website, particularly the military sites, is one manifestation of cyber terrorism. The example of cyber crime against government is web jacking. By 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. Cyber crimes are everywhere, can happen to anyone, in any time. Some examples of cyber crime are identifying theft, storing illegal information, computer viruses, and fraud. We will discuss about each example in detail.

First, we will talk about identify theft. What is actually identify theft? Identity theft, also known as ID theft is a crime in which a criminal obtains key pieces of personal information, such as Social Security or driver's license numbers, in order to pose as someone else. The information can be used to obtain credit, merchandise, and services using the victims’ name. There are two main types of identity theft named account takeover and true name theft. Account takeover identity theft refers to the type of situation where an imposter uses the stolen personal information to gain access to the person’s existing accounts. True name identity theft means that the thief uses personal information to open new accounts. The thief might open a new credit card account, establish cellular phone service, or open a new checking account in order to obtain blank checks. To prevent, don’t keep all of your identification and financial information in one place and never write down your PIN (personal identification numbers) anywhere. Besides, never respond to emails or snail mail that requests personal information such as passwords or PIN numbers. Storing illegal information also considered as cyber crime. Criminals often use the Internet to obtain and transfer illegal images. What do we mean by illegal images on the web? This means images and in some cases text, which you see or may be inadvertently exposed to on a website, which contains any of the following: • Child

abuse images (also known as ‘child pornography’).

• Criminally

obscene content which means images featuring acts of extreme and

violent sexual activity.

Those who involves in this crime, don’t just ignore it, report it. It is important because reports from the public help the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) to remove the images from the internet and to support the investigative processes which could bring those responsible to justice. Child sexual abuse images record the real abuse of a child and your reports to the IWF might help the authorities to trace and rescue a young victim from further exploitation. Next is computer virus. A computer virus is a small software program that spreads from one computer to another computer and that interferes with computer operation. A computer virus may corrupt or delete data on a computer, use an e-mail program to spread the virus to other computers, or even delete everything on the hard disk. Computer viruses are most easily spread by attachments in e-mail messages or by instant messaging messages. Therefore, you must never open an e-mail attachment unless you know who sent the message or unless you are expecting the e-mail attachment. Computer viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files. Computer viruses also spread by using downloads on the Internet. Computer viruses can be hidden in pirated software or in other files or programs that you may download. Last but not least, fraud. Fraud is a deliberate misrepresentation which causes another person to suffer damages. Fraud can be committed through many media, including mail, wire, phone, and the Internet (computer crime and Internet fraud). Several types of criminal fraud include false advertising, advance-fee fraud, bankruptcy fraud, etc. The best way to prevent fraud in both personal and organizational finances is to develop processes that protect sensitive information, enforce accountability, and consistently review financial records.

REFERENCES: 1) http://www.brainyquote.com/words/cr/crime149615.html#ixzz1h5KlT6pg 2) http://www.crime-research.org/articles/joseph06/ 3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_crime 4) http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cyber_crime.html