CYBER CRIMES AND ITS TYPE

As already discussed, the development of technology gave rise to a computer-

related crime, which is, cybercrime. These crimes are just like the attack on the
secured information of people, corporations, or governments. These attacks
aren't on the human body but the virtual body. Cybercrime is an uncontrollable
evil having its base within the misuse of growing dependence on computers in
modern life. The use of computers has become an important part of our life. It is
an immeasurable medium. However, the internet and computers have a dark
side too.

Cybercrime holds no definition in the Information Technology Act, 2000 even

after its amendment in 2008. But it has been given different definitions based on
its common understanding.

The US Department of Justice (1989) defined cybercrimes as “Those crimes

where knowledge of a computer system is essential to commit a crime.”

According to the report prepared by McConnell International, cybercrimes are

“Harmful acts committed from or against a computer or network.”

The United Nations Manual on the Prevention and Control of Computer-related

Crime defines the cybercrime as “Computer crime can involve activities that are
traditional in nature, like theft, fraud, forgery, and mischief, all of which are
generally subject everywhere to criminal sanctions.”

Pawan Duggal said that “Cybercrime refers to all activities done with criminal
intent in cyber space or using the medium of internet. These could be either the
criminal activities in the conventional sense or activities newly evolved with the
growth of the new medium. Any activities which basically offend human
sensibilities can be included in the ambit of cybercrimes.”
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The Oxford Dictionary defines cybercrime as “Criminal activities carried out by
means of computers or the Internet.”

The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (2001) is that the first of its

kind which looks at the concept of cybercrime from a worldwide angle. It
defines cybercrime as “A wide range of malicious activities, including the
illegal interception of data, system interferences that compromise network
integrity and availability, and copyright infringements.”

This convention presents the concept of cyber offences in five dimensions:

i. Offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability of

computer data and systems;
ii. Offences related to computer;
iii. Offences associated with content;
iv. Offences associated with the infringement of copyright; and
v. Abating or aiding such offences.

So, we can lastly define cybercrime simply as any harmful act which is done
using computer system on or against computer system, where the offender
needs to have knowledge of computer system.

History of Cybercrimes

The very first recorded cybercrime was even before the internet came into
existence in 1820. A textile manufacturer in France, Joseph-Marie Jacquard,
produced the loom. The device allowed the repetition of a series of steps within
the weaving of special fabrics. A fear grew amongst the employees that they
lose their job. They committed the act of sabotage to discourage jacquard from
using this new machine. And thus this was the first reported cybercrime.

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Later 1940 first computer was invented which was so big that it could fit into a
room. It was not only big but was also expensive, not everyone could afford it.
Very few had direct access to it. In 1970s the technology became more
advanced and cyber criminals were also learning new techniques of committing
cyber offence. The first identified cyber crimes were computer intrusions and
fraud. The similar crime occurred in 1973, where a chief teller in Union Dime
Savings Bank misappropriated money from the corporate by manipulating
account data within the bank's computing system.

Later in 1980s businesses became more dependent on computers and from that
time the cases of cybercrime increased. The criminals could encrypt the data
easily, can store the data and could even transmit it. By this time computers
were started to be used as the tool to commit cybercrimes and also as the target.
The first person found guilty of cyber crime in 1981 was Ian Murphy (also
known as Captain Zap). He hacked a telephone company.

As we became more advanced by the 21st century the crimes related to computer
also became advanced. And at present there is multiple numbers of cybercrimes
which are hard to trace.

Nature of Cybercrimes

Cybercrimes include crimes related to computers and cyberspace like hacking,

phishing, frauds, thefts, etc. The nature of these crimes is similar to that of the
traditional crimes.

Professor S.T. Vishwanathan has explained the nature of Cybercrimes as:

i. Any criminality during which a computer may be a tool or object of

the crime; in other words the purpose or means of any crime is to
influence the function of a computer;
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 ii. Any incident related to technology during which the victim has
suffered or could have suffered and the perpetrator has or could have
intentionally made any profit;
iii. Computer abuse is taken into account as any illegal, unethical or
unauthorized behaviour concerning the automated processing and
transmission of data.

Cybercrimes are different from other sorts of crime. Cybercrimes are different

from computer crimes. However, most of the time they have been used
interchangeably in common parlance. But they're different from one
another like, for a computer crime the perpetrator uses a computing system and
special knowledge of computer technology whereas for a cybercrime the
perpetrator uses the computer network or internet and special knowledge of
cyberspace. For example: Computer crimes- inappropriate use of computer,
damaging a system, stealing information, introducing virus in a system, etc.
without the permission of the user Cybercrimes- phishing, identity theft, child
pornography, piracy, copyright infringement, carding, etc.

Characteristics of Cybercrimes

Cybercrimes have following characteristics:

i. Specialized knowledge: the person who has the knowledge of internet

is only commit cybercrime. Most of the time cyber criminals are well
educated and understand the use of internet. It is hard to trace them.
ii. The virtual world: every cybercrime takes place in the virtual world.
The attacker and the victim are out of the virtual world.
iii. Collection of evidence: it is hard to get evidence against the offender
as it happens in the virtual world.
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 iv. Geographical challenges: distance between the target and the attacker
does not matter here. Any attacker sitting in US can attack the target
in India.
v. Magnitude of the crime: cyber attack can cause injury to an
unimaginable extent. It can also cause loss of life. The attacker can
destroy data or steal data and can also destroy website in no time.

Classification of Cybercrimes

Cybercrimes are classified into four categories:

i. Crime against an individual:

 Unauthorized control/access over computer system or hacking:
Gaining access to any computer, computer system or computer
network without the permission of the rightful owner.
 Dissemination of obscene material: Indecent exposure or
pornography (normally child pornography) or hoisting of
prohibited websites which may destroy the mind of the
adolescent.
 Cyber-stalking: Stalking someone through virtual medium
causing a physical threat to that person.
 Indecent exposure
 E-mail Harassment: Harassing someone by sending files or
messages via email.
 Defamation: Destroying the reputation of any person by
hacking their emails or any social media account and sending
some vulgar messages using that account or email.

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  Cheating & Fraud: Stealing passwords or data storage, the
person doing this has guilty mind and this leads to fraud or
cheating.
 Email spoofing: That email which misrepresents its origin,
means it is sent from somewhere else and it is showing its
origin at somewhere else.
 Cracking Child Pornography: this includes distributing or
accessing the materials which sexually exploit the children.
 Phishing: It is a type of internet fraud scam where the email is
sent in the name of company or any organisation and the
personal details of the receiver are extracted, etc.
ii. Crime against individual property:
 Cyber vandalism: Destroying and damaging the data when a
network service is disrupted or stopped.
 Virus transmission: These are the programs that attach itself to
the computer and spread in every files and document and which
may lead to deleting or destroying of those files or document.
 Hacking systems
 Cyber-squatting: Registering the name of well known company
or brands with an intention of reselling them at a profit.
 Intellectual Property Crimes: An unlawful act because of which
the owner is partially or completely deprived of his rights.
 Internet time thefts: This comes under hacking where the hacker
gets unauthorized access to someone else’s ISP ID and
password, without the owner’s knowledge, etc.
iii. Crime against Government or organisation:
 Password sniffing: This is an attack which steals the user name
and password from the network.
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  Denial of service attacks: Shutting down of network or machine
through an attack, which causes problem to the user to access.
 Virus attack
 E-mail bombing: A kind of malicious act in which the mail box
overflows with large number of emails and which also causes
denial of access and other problems to the user.
 Salami attack: Such type of attack in which the series of small
attacks take place which later result into a big attack and this
can go undetected because of its nature.
 Cyber warfare: This is politically motivated hacking to conduct
sabotage and espionage.
 Cyber terrorism: This is a terrorist attack on internet which is
dangerous to sovereignty and integrity of the country.
 Possession of unauthorized information
 Unauthorized control over computer system
 Distribution of pirated software: This is distributed from one
computer to another with an intention to destroy the data and
official records of the Government.
 Cyber vandalism: Damage or destruction in digital form maybe
of any website.
 Intellectual Property related crimes
 Cyber thefts: Theft by means of computer or internet, such as
identity theft, ID theft, Password theft, etc.
iv. Crime against society:
 Cyber Pornography: Distributing or accessing the sexually
explicit materials or obscene material.
 Online gambling: Kind of gambling conducted on internet.

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  Financial cybercrimes: Consists of different types of offences
like corruption, money-laundering, social fraud and tax fraud.
 Cyber Trafficking: Trafficking for which internet is used for
trafficking drugs, human beings or weapons.
 Cyber Forgery: The act of deceiving large number of people by
sending threatening mails as online business transaction.
 Selling illegal products, etc.

Causes of Cybercrime

Following are the causes of cybercrimes:

i. Huge capacity to store data: The computer features in carrying a huge

amount data on a little space. This makes easier for a cybercriminal to
get easy access to that data and he can also get secret and official data
and can misuse them for his personal profit.
ii. Easy access: The computer runs through an operating system which is
composed of millions of codes. The fallible nature of human may
create a chance of lapse, anytime. The cybercriminals take the chance
of this lapse and get easy access to the system. This is known a
hacking.
iii. Negligence: This is one of the characteristic of human behaviour. The
negligence on the part of the network user gives the cybercriminal a
chance to get unauthorised or illegal access to the computer network
or computer system.
iv. Non availability of the evidence: Unlike traditional crimes it is hard
to collect sufficient evidence in the cybercrime. The internet provides
anonymity to the criminals and this helps them to commit more
cybercrime. This also encourage them to indulge in criminal activity
more and more living no evidence behind.
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 v. Jurisdictional uncertainty: Cybercrimes have transnational nature.
Since they are committed through cyberspace network, thus they don’t
recognise geographical limitation. So many times this happens that if a
person commits a crime against a person of another country and that
act is crime in the victim’s country but not in the offender’s country
then this helps the offender to escape. It gets difficult for the law
enforcing authority to deal with the cybercrimes without any
recognised code of law, internationally.
vi. Lack of knowledge: One of the important reasons is also the lack of
knowledge about cyberspace and danger in cyberspace. Using internet
is very common among children and teenagers and most of them are
unaware of the cyber attacks that can happen, this lack of knowledge
leads them to take certain steps of which they are completely unaware
that it can cause harm to them. Many times it can be seen that some
adults also, who has no proper knowledge of cyber attacks does some
of the mistakes like sharing their personal information and many more
which land them into big problems.

How to prevent Cybercrimes?

Cybercrimes are those crimes which takes place online. Therefore, the users
need to take some basic precautions to keep themselves safe from the
cybercrimes by:

i. Using strong password: The password should be changed regularly.

One password should not be used on different websites. One should
always keep a complex password.
ii. Managing social media settings: One should always keep his/her
personal and private information locked down. The less he/she will

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 share his/her personal information publicly the more safe he/she will
be.
iii. Keeping all the software up to dated: It is important to keep all the
software updated specially operating system and internet security
software. Cyber criminals most of the time use known flaws in the
software to access our computers.
iv. Using anti-virus/anti-malware: Keeping anti-virus and anti-malware
up to dated and scanning the local data regularly keeps the data safe
from any virus/malware. Free anti-virus/anti-malware does not
provide complete protection against most common virus/malware.
v. Using two factor authentication services: These security mechanisms
allow the user to add a second layer of authentication so that even if a
hacker has user’s Id and password, he won’t be able to log in to the
online account because he does not have the two factor authentication
code.
vi. Using VPN: Use of VPN helps keeping the third party companies
from spying on the person. The user can log in to a secure network
even if he/she is in a remote area.
vii. Keeping certain information private: There is certain information
which we should not share with anyone. One should not share his/her
phone number, email address, place of work, etc. on any social
networking sights.
viii. Talking to children about the internet: Children should be taught about
the internet. They should be taught about the acceptable and good use
of internet. They must be taught about the cybercrime risks and
parents must make sure that in case if they are experiencing some kind
if cyber harassment or bullying then they can talk to them. They must
keep an eye on their children’s activity on the internet.

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