This Blog contains information about Computer crimes: hacking, cyber theft, software piracy, Computer viruses & worms and privacy issues.

Computer Crime:

Cyber crime is becoming one of the Net’s growth businesses. Today, criminals are doing everything from stealing intellectual property & committing fraud to unleashing viruses and committing acts of cyber terrorism.

‘Criminal actions accomplish through the use of computer system, especially with intend to defraud, destroy, or make unauthorised use of computer system resources. ‘

AITP define Computer crime as:-

1. The unauthorised use, access, modification & destruction of hardware, software, data or network resources.
2. The unauthorised release of information.
3. The unauthorised copying of software.
4. Denying an end user access to his/ her hardware, software, data or network resources.
5. Using or conspiring to use computer or network resources to illegally obtain information or tangible property.

Hacking:

Hacking is the obsessive use of computers, or the unauthorised access or use of networked computer system.

Cyber thieves have at their fingertips a dozens dangerous tools, from “scans” that ferret out weakness in website software programs to “sniffers” that snatch passwords.

Cyber Theft:

Many computer crimes involves the theft of money in the majority of cases, they are “Inside jobs” that involves unauthorised network entry & fraudulent alteration of computer database to cover the track of employees involved. Many computer crimes involved the use of internet. One example to this was the theft of $ 11 million from Citibank in late 1994. Russian Hacker Vladimir Levin & accomplices in St. Petersburg used the internet to electronically break into Citibank’s mainframe system in New York.

In most cases the scope of such financial loses is much higher than the incidents reported. The most companies don’t reveal that they have been targeted of victim of computer crime. The scaring off customers & provoking complains by shareholders.

Unauthorised use at work:

The unauthorised use of computer systems and networks can be called Time & Resource Theft. A common example is unauthorised use of company-owned computer network by employees. They may range from doing private consulting or personal finance, or playing video games, to unauthorised use of internet on company networks.

Network monitoring software called Sniffers, is frequently used to monitor network traffic to evaluate network capacity, as well as reveal evidence of improper use.

Internet abuses in the work place.

Software Piracy:

Computer programs are valuable property & thus are subject to theft from computer system. However, unauthorised coping of software or Software Piracy, is also a major form of software theft. Widespread unauthorised copying of software by company employees is a major from of computer piracy.

Unauthorized copying is illegal because software is intellectual property that is protected by company right law & user licensing agreement.

The alternatives to software Piracy are Shareware, which allows you to make copies of software for others, and Public Domain Software, which is not copyrighted.

Computer Viruses and Worms:

One of the most destructive examples of computer crime involves the creation of computer virus or worm.

Virus : Virus is the more popular term but technically virus is the program code that can not work without being inserted into another program.

Worm: Worm is a distinct program that can run unaided.

In either case the program copy annoying or destructive routine into the networked computer system of anyone who access computer infected with the virus or who use copies of magnetic disk, Pen drives for data transfer. Thus computer virus or worm can spread destruction among many users.

Though sometimes they display only humorous message, they more often destroy the content of memory, hard disk, and other storage devices.

Sources of virus:

Computer virus typically enters a computer system though an e-mail, attachment s via the internet and online services, or through illegal or borrowed copies of software. Copies of shareware can be also the source of viruses, sometimes downloaded files from internet.

How it works:

A virus usually copies itself into the files of computers operating system. Then virus spread into main memory and copies itself onto the computer’s hard disk and any inserted pen drives. The virus spread through the e-mails, file transfers, other telecommunication activities, or pen drives or floppy drives from infected computers.

How to prevent from viruses:

Avoid using software from questionable resource, without checking for viruses. Use updated anti virus programs to protect your system from viruses. Avoid using Pen drives with out scan.

Privacy issues:

Information Technology makes it technically and economically feasible to collect, store, integrate, interchange and retrieve data and information quickly & easily. However the power of information technology can have negative effect to right to privacy of every individual.

Important privacy issues are being debated in business & government; as internet technologies accelerate the ubiquity of global telecommunications connections in business & society. For Example:

1. Accessing individual’s private e-mail conversation & computer records, and collecting & sharing information about individuals gained from their visits to internet websites & news groups (violation of privacy).
2. Always knowing where a person is, especially in mobile & paging services become more closely associated with people rather than places ( computer monitoring).
3. Using customer information gained from many sources to market additional business services (computer matching).
4. Collecting telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, credit card numbers, and other personal information to built individual customer profiles (unauthorised personal files).

Privacy on the Internet:

Internet is notorious for giving its users a feeling of anonymity, when in reality they are highly visible & open to violations of their privacy. Most of the Internet & its world wide web, e-mail, chat, & news groups are still wide open unsecured electronic frontier, with no tough rules, on what information is personal & private.

Information about internet users is captured legitimately & automatically each time when you visit a website or news group & recorded as a “Cookie File” on your hard disk. Then the website owners or online auditing service may sell the information from cookies files or other records or your internet use to third parties. To make matter worst, much of the Net & Web are easy targets for interception or theft by hackers of private information furnished by internet users.

Computer Matching:

Computer profiling & mistakes in the computer matching of personal data are other controversial threats to privacy. Individuals have been mistakenly arrested & jailed, and people have been denied credit because their physical profiles or personal data have been used by profiling software to match them incorrectly or improperly with the wrong individuals.

Another threat is the unauthorised matching of computerized information about you extracted from the databases of sales transaction processing system, & sold to information brokers or other companies.

Privacy laws:

Many Countries strictly regulate the collection & use of personal data business corporations & government agencies. Many government privacy laws attempted to enforce the privacy of computer based files & communications.

Computer Libel & Censorship:

The opposite side of privacy debates is the right of people to know about matters others may want to keep private (freedom of information), the right of people to express their opinion about such matters (freedom of speech), and the right of people to publish those opinion (freedom of press).

Tools being used for this are:

Spamming is the discriminate sending of unsolicited e-mail message (spam) to many internet users. It is the favourite tactic of the mass mailers of unsolicited advertisements, or junk e-mails. Spamming has also being used by cyber criminals to spread computer viruses or infiltrate many computer systems.

Flaming is the act of screening extremely critical, derogatory, and often vulgar e-mail message (flame mail), flaming is especially prevent on some of the internet’s special internet news groups. There have been many incidents of racist or defamatory message on the Web that have led to calls for censorship and lawsuits for liable.

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