Types of cyber crimes:
Hacking:
This is the act of gaining unauthorized access to a network or computer system, and in some cases making unauthorized use of this access. In simple terms, hacking refers to illegal intrusion into a computer system without the permission of the computer owner or user. Also, hacking is the act by which other forms of cybercrime (such as terrorism and fraud) are committed. Virus Dissemination: This refers to malicious software that attaches itself to other software. Some examples of malicious software are virus, worms, Trojan Horse, Time Bomb, and Logic Bomb. Denial of Service Attack: This is an act by the criminal, who floods the band width of the victim’s network or fills his e-mail box with spam mail, depriving him of the services he is entitled to access or provide. Software Piracy: This is the theft of software through the illegal copying of genuine programs or the counterfeiting and distribution of products intended to pass for the original. Retail revenue losses worldwide are ever increasing due to this crime. It can be done in various ways such as end user copying, hard disk loading, and illegal downloads from the Internet. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Crime: IRC servers have chat rooms in which people from anywhere in the world can come together and chat with each other. Criminals use chat rooms for meeting co-conspirators. Paedophiles use chat rooms to allure children. Hackers use it for discussing their exploits. Net Extortion: This is the copying of the company’s confidential data in order to extort said company for a huge amount. Pornography: This was the first consistently successful ecommerce product. Pornography encourages customers to access their websites. Anybody including children can log on to the internet and access websites with pornographic contents with the click of a mouse. Credit Card Fraud: If electronic transactions are not secured, the credit card numbers can be stolen by hackers who can misuse this card by impersonating the credit card owner. Phishing: This is the technique of pulling out confidential information from the bank or financial institutional account holders by deceptive means. Cyber Stalking: This is when the criminal follows the victim by sending emails, normally entering the chat rooms frequently. Spoofing: This is getting one computer on a network to pretend to have the identity of another computer, usually one with specified access privileges, so as to obtain access to the other computers on the network. Cyber Defamation: This is when the criminal sends emails containing defamatory matters to all concerned of the victim or posts the defamatory matters on a website. A disgruntled employee may do this against his boss, divorced husband against ex-wife, etc. Threatening: This is when the criminal sends threatening email or contacts the victim via chat room. Anyone disgruntled may do this against boss, friend, official, etc. Salami Attack: In such crime, the criminal makes minor changes in such a manner that it goes unnoticed. The criminal may make a program that deducts a small amount of money per month from the account of all the customers of the bank, and deposit the same in his account. In this case, no account holder will approach the bank for such a small amount, but the criminal gains a huge amount. |