Ram Nath Kovind

14th President of India

Incumbent

Assumed office

25 July 2017

Prime Narendra Modi

Minister

Vice Venkaiah Naidu

President

Preceded by Pranab Mukherjee

26th Governor of Bihar

In office

16 August 2015 – 20 June 2017

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar

Preceded by Keshari Nath Tripathi

Succeeded by Keshari Nath Tripathi

Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha

In office

3 April 1994 – 2 April 2006

Preceded by Subramanian Swamy

Succeeded by Vinay Katiyar

Constituency Uttar Pradesh

Personal details

Born 1 October 1945 (age 74)

Paraunkh, United Provinces, British India

(present-day Uttar Pradesh, India)

Political party Bharatiya Janata Party

Savita Kovind (m. 1974)

Spouse(s)

Children Prashant Kumar Kovind (son)

Shweta Kovind (daughter)

Residence Rashtrapati Bhavan, Rajpath, New

Delhi, Delhi, India

Alma mater Kanpur University (B.Com, LL.B.)

 CYBERCRIME
LAW

WRITTEN BY:

 Michael Aaron Dennis

See Article History

Alternative Title: computer crime

Cybercrime, also called computer crime, the use of a computer as an instrument to

further illegal ends, such as committing fraud, trafficking in child pornography
and intellectual property, stealing identities, or violating privacy. Cybercrime,
especially through the Internet, has grown in importance as the computer has become
central to commerce, entertainment, and government.
Because of the early and widespread adoption of computers and the Internet in the
United States, most of the earliest victims and villains of cybercrime were Americans.
By the 21st century, though, hardly a hamlet remained anywhere in the world that had
not been touched by cybercrime of one sort or another.

DEFINING CYBERCRIME
New technologies create new criminal opportunities but few new types of crime.
What distinguishes cybercrime from traditional criminal activity? Obviously, one
difference is the use of the digital computer, but technology alone is insufficient for
any distinction that might exist between different realms of criminal activity.
Criminals do not need a computer to commit fraud, traffic in child pornography and
intellectual property, steal an identity, or violate someone’s privacy. All those
activities existed before the “cyber” prefix became ubiquitous. Cybercrime, especially
involving the Internet, represents an extension of existing criminal behaviour
alongside some novel illegal activities.

00:0003:21
Most cybercrime is an attack on information about individuals, corporations, or
governments. Although the attacks do not take place on a physical body, they do take
place on the personal or corporate virtual body, which is the set of informational
attributes that define people and institutions on the Internet. In other words, in the
digital age our virtual identities are essential elements of everyday life: we are a
bundle of numbers and identifiers in multiple computer databases owned by
governments and corporations. Cybercrime highlights the centrality of networked
computers in our lives, as well as the fragility of such seemingly solid facts as
individual identity
An important aspect of cybercrime is its nonlocal character: actions can occur in
jurisdictions separated by vast distances. This poses severe problems for law
enforcement since previously local or even national crimes now require international
cooperation. For example, if a person accesses child pornography located on a
computer in a country that does not ban child pornography, is that individual
committing a crime in a nation where such materials are illegal? Where exactly does
cybercrime take place? Cyberspace is simply a richer version of the space where a
telephone conversation takes place, somewhere between the two people having the
conversation. As a planet-spanning network, the Internet offers criminals multiple
hiding places in the real world as well as in the network itself. However, just as
individuals walking on the ground leave marks that a skilled tracker can follow,
cybercriminals leave clues as to their identity and location, despite their best efforts to
cover their tracks. In order to follow such clues across national boundaries, though,
international cybercrime treaties must be ratified.

In 1996 the Council of Europe, together with government representatives from the
United States, Canada, and Japan, drafted a preliminary international treaty covering
computer crime. Around the world, civil libertarian groups immediately protested
provisions in the treaty requiring Internet service providers (ISPs) to store information
on their customers’ transactions and to turn this information over on demand.On
November 23, 2001, the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime was signed by
30 states. The convention came into effect in 2004. Additional protocols,
covering terrorist activities and racist and xenophobic cybercrimes, were proposed in
2002 and came into effect in 2006. In addition, various national laws, such as the USA
PATRIOT Act of 2001, have expanded law enforcement’s power to monitor and
protect computer networks.
TYPES OF CYBERCRIME
Cybercrime ranges across a spectrum of activities. At one end are crimes that involve
fundamental breaches of personal or corporate privacy, such as assaults on
the integrity of information held in digital depositories and the use of illegally
obtained digital information to blackmail a firm or individual. Also at this end of the
spectrum is the growing crime of identity theft. Midway along the spectrum lie
transaction-based crimes such as fraud, trafficking in child pornography,
digital piracy, money laundering, and counterfeiting. These are specific crimes with
specific victims, but the criminal hides in the relative anonymity provided by
the Internet. Another part of this type of crime involves individuals within
corporations or government bureaucracies deliberately altering data for either profit or
political objectives. At the other end of the spectrum are those crimes that involve
attempts to disrupt the actual workings of the Internet. These range from spam,
hacking, and denial of service attacks against specific sites to acts of cyberterrorism—
that is, the use of the Internet to cause public disturbances and even death.
Cyberterrorism focuses upon the use of the Internet by nonstate actors to affect a
nation’s economic and technological infrastructure. Since the September 11 attacks of
2001, public awareness of the threat of cyberterrorism has grown dramatically.
DID YOU KNOW?

 The FBI created a Cyber Most Wanted List in 2014 that grew to include 42 groups and
individuals by 2018.

 The average cost of an American corporate data breach is almost $8 million.

IDENTITY THEFT AND INVASION OF PRIVACY

Cybercrime affects both a virtual and a real body, but the effects upon each are
different. This phenomenon is clearest in the case of identity theft. In the United
States, for example, individuals do not have an official identity card but a Social
Security number that has long served as a de facto identification number. Taxes are
collected on the basis of each citizen’s Social Security number, and many private
institutions use the number to keep track of their employees, students, and patients.
Access to an individual’s Social Security number affords the opportunity to gather all
the documents related to that person’s citizenship—i.e., to steal his identity. Even
stolen credit card information can be used to reconstruct an individual’s identity.
When criminals steal a firm’s credit card records, they produce two distinct effects.
First, they make off with digital information about individuals that is useful in many
ways. For example, they might use the credit card information to run up huge bills,
forcing the credit card firms to suffer large losses, or they might sell the information
to others who can use it in a similar fashion. Second, they might use individual credit
card names and numbers to create new identities for other criminals. For example, a
criminal might contact the issuing bank of a stolen credit card and change the mailing
address on the account. Next, the criminal may get a passport or driver’s license with
his own picture but with the victim’s name. With a driver’s license, the criminal can
easily acquire a new Social Security card; it is then possible to open bank accounts
and receive loans—all with the victim’s credit record and background. The original
cardholder might remain unaware of this until the debt is so great that the bank
contacts the account holder. Only then does the identity theft become visible.
Although identity theft takes places in many countries, researchers and law-
enforcement officials are plagued by a lack of information and statistics about
the crime worldwide. Cybercrime is clearly, however, an international problem.
In 2015 the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report on identity theft;
in the previous year almost 1.1 million Americans had their identities fraudulently
used to open bank, credit card, or utility accounts. The report also stated that another
16.4 million Americans were victimized by account theft, such as use of stolen credit
cards and automatic teller machine (ATM) cards. The BJS report showed that while
the total number of identity theft victims in the United States had grown by about 1
million since 2012, the total loss incurred by individuals had declined since 2012 by
about $10 billion to $15.4 billion. Most of that decline was from a sharp drop in the
number of people losing more than $2,000. Most identity theft involved small sums,
with losses less than $300 accounting for 54 percent of the total.
INTERNET FRAUD
Schemes to defraud consumers abound on the Internet. Among the most famous is
the Nigerian, or “419,” scam; the number is a reference to the section of Nigerian law
that the scam violates. Although this con has been used with both fax and traditional
mail, it has been given new life by the Internet. In the scheme, an individual receives
an e-mail asserting that the sender requires help in transferring a large sum of money
out of Nigeria or another distant country. Usually, this money is in the form of an
asset that is going to be sold, such as oil, or a large amount of cash that requires
“laundering” to conceal its source; the variations are endless, and new specifics are
constantly being developed. The message asks the recipient to cover some cost of
moving the funds out of the country in return for receiving a much larger sum of
money in the near future. Should the recipient respond with a check or money order,
he is told that complications have developed; more money is required. Over time,
victims can lose thousands of dollars that are utterly unrecoverable.
In 2002 the newly formed U.S. Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported that
more than $54 million dollars had been lost through a variety of fraud schemes; this
represented a threefold increase over estimated losses of $17 million in 2001. The
annual losses grew in subsequent years, reaching $125 million in 2003, about $200
million in 2006, close to $250 million in 2008, and over $1 billion in 2015. In the
United States the largest source of fraud is what IC3 calls “non-payment/non-
delivery,” in which goods and services either are delivered but not paid for or are paid
for but not delivered. Unlike identity theft, where the theft occurs without the victim’s
knowledge, these more traditional forms of fraud occur in plain sight. The victim
willingly provides private information that enables the crime; hence, these are
transactional crimes. Few people would believe someone who walked up to them on
the street and promised them easy riches; however, receiving an unsolicited e-mail or
visiting a random Web page is sufficiently different that many people easily open
their wallets. Despite a vast amount of consumer education, Internet fraud remains a
growth industry for criminals and prosecutors. Europe and the United States are far
from the only sites of cybercrime. South Korea is among the most wired countries in
the world, and its cybercrime fraud statistics are growing at an alarming
rate. Japan has also experienced a rapid growth in similar crimes.

Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis

Cybercriminals are using more advanced and scalable tools to breach user privacy, and they are
getting results. Two billion data records were compromised in 2017, and more than 4.5 billion
records were breached in the first half of 2018 alone.

Here are the most pressing cybersecurity issues in 2019, as well as rising trends into 2020.

ADVANCED PHISHING KITS

Four new malware samples are created every second. Phishing remains one of the most
successful attack vectors due to its speed, as most phishing sites stay online for just four to five
hours. Users only report 17% of phishing attacks, and it is seen as a low-risk type of activity. As
a result, today only 65% of all URLs are considered trustworthy. This puts a strain on both the
consumer and any enterprise with an online presence.

We predict that 2020 will be known for advanced phishing attacks, due to the number of new
phishing kits available on the dark web. These kits enable people with only basic technical
knowledge to run their own phishing attacks. With more tools available, phishing will become an
even more dangerous attack method.

REMOTE ACCESS ATTACKS

Remote attacks are growing in number, as well as becoming more sophisticated. One of the main
types of remote access attack in 2018 was cryptojacking, which targeted cryptocurrency owners.
Another popular type of attack threatened perimeter devices.

According to our threat intelligence database, remote access attacks are among the most common
attack vectors in a connected home. Hackers target computers, smartphones, internet protocol
(IP) cameras and network attached storage (NAS) devices, since these tools usually need to have
ports open and forwarded to external networks or the internet.

ATTACKS VIA SMARTPHONES

One of the most common attack vectors to smartphones are related to unsafe browsing (phishing,
spear phishing, malware). More than 60% of fraud online is accomplished through mobile
platforms, according to RSA, and 80% of mobile fraud is achieved through mobile apps instead
of mobile web browsers.

As most people use their phones to manage financial operations or handle sensitive data outside
the security of their home network, this becomes a prominent threat. The fact that users typically
hold all their information on their phone, and that smartphones are now used for two-factor
authentication - one of the most widely used cybersecurity tools - increases the security risk if
the device is lost or stolen.

VULNERABILITIES IN HOME AUTOMATION AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS

The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) industry is expected to grow to more than seven billion
devices by the end of 2020, according to Gartner. Many consumers do not see IoT devices as a
vulnerability, because a significant portion of them do not have a user interface. This could lead
to issues understanding what kind of data the device collects or manages.

However, IoT devices are not only collecting valuable user data. They could become an entry
point for an attacker or tool to launch a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. IoT devices
are not secure by design, because putting a focus on security would significantly increase
manufacturing and maintenance expenses.

According to CUJO AI threat intelligence data, 46% of all attack types that these devices
experience are remote access attempts and 39% are used for detecting behavioural patterns. With
the exponential growth of connected devices at home, these threats are likely to increase.

UTILIZING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Most of the biggest industries already use machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)
to automate their processes and improve overall performance. Cybersecurity and cybercrime are
no exception.

AI is often considered to be a dual-use technology - while more cybersecurity companies are

implementing AI-driven algorithms to prevent threats, hackers are also taking the opportunity to
become more effective.

The majority of AI qualities serve malicious purposes. AI systems are cheap, scalable,
automated, anonymous and they provide physical and psychological distance for the attacker,
diminishing the immediate morality around cybercrime.
- Artificial intelligence for cybersecurity evasion. Cybercriminals are using various evasion
methods to avoid detection, and AI helps to optimize different elements of this process.

- Artificial intelligence in phishing. AI could help to create content that can pass through
typical cybersecurity filters, such as email messages that are indistinguishable from those written
by humans.

- Artificial intelligence in social engineering. While social engineering is one of the most
popular hacking techniques, it takes a lot of time to implement properly. AI could help in not
only collecting information, but also by writing emails or calling potential victims.

With new advances in AI-driven technology, utilizing AI in cyber attacks will become an even
more popular and dangerous trend.

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