How Cybercrime started and its present status

INTRODUCTION

In the present day context, computer technologies and internet have become essential elements in the day-to-day life of individuals. There has been a significant increase in the number of individuals accessing ‘World Wide Web’ every hour and in every minute. People access the internet and use computers both for legitimate purposes and for illegal motives. The advancement in the field of internet has developed a virtual environment where activities can be executed through networked computers. Currently, criminal activities have increased to a significant extent due to easy and restriction free availability of information from the internet as well as free communication services offered by online service providers both locally and internationally. Illegitimate uses of these services through the internet, as a source of adequate information and economically beneficial way of communication, have become a prime cause of criminal activities over the internet, commonly referred as ‘cybercrime’. This paper addresses Cybercrimes In Terms Of How The Problem Started, And Its Current Position. The paper also looks at various harms that such crimes have to internet uses, the motivating factors, and the possible solutions to this increasing problem.

General Problem of Crime and Internet

The origin of cyber crime can be attributed to the technological advancements of the late 1980s and the 1990s. During the mid and the late 1990s, a lot of innovations were being evident among the developed nations. Wall (pg.1) claims that the availability of various opportunities in innovation were the main initiating aspects of cybercrimes. The United States has had some programs that encourage celebration of genius youths (Wall, pg.4). Such youths could be a major threat to internet use and computer safety. Many individuals and organizations were viewing the technological change from the basis of being a great opportunity for technological and economic growth thereby having nothing to worry about the many growing evils brought in by the computer technology. Such advancements gave birth to computer crime as people looked for better chances to benefit both rightly and through evil actions such as cybercrimes. In contrary to what everyone thought to be a smooth achievement, problems emerged with many companies and individuals losing money to cybercriminals. The deterioration of ethical values was also a major result of cybercrime. Problems like cyber pornography have been a growing issue over the past few years even though many countries prohibit the sale or use of such materials through laws and regulations (Wall, pg.6).

Cybercrime poses problems to both computers user and network user by making the use of internet unsafe in various capacities. According to Wall (pg.8), there are many confusions in terms of who cybercrime victims are and the way they are often victimized. Some case could depict the victims as individuals but most effects are felt in terms of corporate entities. In a typical case, certain computers could be used in committing cybercrimes or the same computers could be targeted. Cybercrimes involve offenses committed against certain individuals or even several groups of individuals. Such offenses are mainly done with criminal motives such as internationally harming the victims reputation, cause physical or mental damage to the cybercrime victim, or benefit financially using the wrong tactics.

Most individuals initiating cybercrime do it with a key aim of benefiting from the criminal actions, which could be direct or indirect. Cybercriminals could be highly skilled to do their job or they could only have adequate experience to execute such crimes but mainly they have high skills, which enable them handle complecated tasks in a smart way (Burns and Price, pg.70). Most, modern telecommunication networks are used, which increases the possibility that those affected have hardly any knowledge links to the cybercrime initiators. Internet tools and techniques used include chat rooms, groups, emails, and notice boards. Other than being a major problem to individuals or small groups, cybercrime has the potential of threatening national security as well as a country’s financial health after the problem has grown to the national level (Burns and Price, pg.72). This aspect has made cybercrime be considered as a high profile issue.

The most appalling cybercrimes are those that revolve around aspects like cracking, copyright, child pornography, child grooming, and infringement. Aspects like pornography are illegal in many countries especially when entailing children. Cybercrime take these legal barriers as an advantage to harm the victims or benefit financially from them. Other than this problem, privacy has become an issue making confidential information face risks of being intercepted or lost. Most of cybercriminals are young, a factor that could being interpreted by the much time that the young population has due to lack of commitments in jobs or in family obligations.

Different Types of Cybercrimes and their respective Problems

Cybercrime involve a number of computer and internet activities that are typically illegal and harmful to many computer users. According to Young Literature (Pg.10), there are four categories of cyber-trespassing. The fore trespassers include utopians, cyberpunks, cyber-spies, and cyber-terrorists. The utopians are cyber trespassers who believe that whatever they are doing is for the societal benefits given that their actions demonstrate the vulnerability of the society. In this case, it would be difficult to stop their cybercriminal activities since they believe that their actions are hardly harmful. Cyberpunks on the other hand are very aggressively anti-establishment. Their actions are intentional and they are directed to causing harm within an international scope but their main target the people who have offended them at some point (Carr, pg.84). Their actions are therefore intentional and specific. Cyber-spies work by obtaining private information without seeking any permission from the users. Lastly, cyber-terrorists are programmers who break into other people’s computers with a motive of stealing or destroying personal information. Their actions are motivated by terrorism intentions according to Wall (pg.5)

Hacking is another major computer crime that is organized in a systematic way. Hackers first target an organization; identify the key interest, and find more about it using search engines. They also identify such targets’ vulnerability using the internet. They then use basic software tools to break into, destroy, or acquire organizational or individual data depending on their motives (William, Boni and Gerald, pg.110).

Cybercriminals using computer devices or networks to make advancements on the other ends include fraud, cyberstalking, information warfare, and phishing scams. Crimes such as spam involve unauthorized emails sent for commercial purposes. This cybercrime is greatly handled by the law. Other cybercrimes such as fraud involve misrepresentation of information. This could lead to wrong processes or information loss. Fraud as a cybercrime also involves the alteration of information in a way that is hardly authorized. Cybercriminals in this case only require some technical expertise. It is common among employees who could enter force data or enter unauthorized instructions. People could as well use unauthorized processes to execute their criminal plans.

Challenges Posed by Cybercriminal to Criminal Justice Systems

Criminal justice systems could only be in a position of helping within the cybercrimes by seeking help from internet users. Internet users should be in the capacity to identify and formulate a report on cases of cybercriminal activities committed against them. The main challenge in this case is that the internet is too wide and endless to point out who exactly committed a given cybercrime. The justice system thus lack the necessary ground of passing judgments on suspected cybercriminals.

In the case of common forms of cybercrime such as offensive content, it may be difficult to point out who exactly committed the crime. Websites and the information contained in websites are controlled such that no obscene content would reach the users. Such obscene content could be created and spread for various reason, most of which are illegal but encryption could be employed to disguise the identity of the cybercriminals. The aspect of the information being illegal varies significantly across different countries and within nations, resulting to another challenge that the justice systems face in passing judgments on cybercrimes.

Again, people have strong but varying beliefs concerning obscene information created on various websites. This aspect makes the intention of the cybercriminals in this category achieve their intended goals and objectives. A major case in this cybercrime is internet pornography which has gone to the extent of child pornography but most of the contents are unknown as to who posts them. Such contents also have warning information on who should or should not view the content. It could be difficult to pass judgment on what seems to be crime in this case especially given that such websites clarify the minimum age as a condition of viewing the web content. People are also warned about the use of unknown websites. Online transaction are also initiated with stun warnings that users need to be careful especially where personal information is required. This could be the best way of preventing cybercrime even without straining the justice systems (Wall, pg.179).

Real World Problems and the Solutions for both Technical and non-technical Professionals

In order for individuals or agencies to protect their personal information or critical information belonging to their companies, such individuals or agencies should be able to recognize any possible cybercrime treats to their businesses in terms of assets, data, and information. It is possible that cybercrime threats could come from a multi-directional perspective, both from within the organization, business or government agency, or from the outside respectively (William, Boni and Gerald, pg.92). In any business organization or government agency, it is good to initiate basic training on aspects related to the way people could identify and recognize threat agents in terms of their motives, opportunities, and rationalization for their illegal actions (William, Boni and Gerald, pg.92).

Internet’s role in information warfare

A number of ways to protect and avoid any attacks from cybercriminals or internet attackers exist. Some organizations or individuals within government agencies however facilitate such attacks due to their actions and motives to benefit from such illegal activities (Carr, pg.67). Some companies and agencies in the United States such as the United States Department of Defense systems aid such cybercrime activities and promote their vulnerability to cyber attacks. The United States Department of Defense systems for instance fail to update their I-way system updates or could simply fail refuse to update thereby ending up to lose millions of dollars. Such losses are as a result of negligence especially by the people in charge o making such updates. This problem is faced by many other organizations in which there could be internal participants promoting such attacks.

Actual Internet Crime cases

Actual cases of internet crimes exist. A good case is Bank Fraud, where a website was set-up for cybercrime motives to obtain funds from ignorant web users. The case involved the reporting of the website as an online transaction business for the Bank Bumiputra Malaysia. This false website asked depositors to give their account numbers and other information to be eligible for a Lucky drawing according to South China Morning Post (8/17/98). Another case is that of Credit Union Fraud where hackers charged more than $1 million to the debit cards of credit union members by using a computer to guess the account members of the members according to the Washington Post (8/15/98).

Fighting Cybercrimes

Complexity of the Emerging Cyber threat

The cases of cybercrimes are today countless. As the frequency of using the internet increases, cybercriminals get even more and better opportunities to exercise their motives. While such cases increase, there are many ways of reducing or eliminating cybercrimes. As technology advances, complexities in the use of internet and the emerging threats increase. Nations find it difficult to deal with cybercrimes due to the lack of the necessary cyber power to handle such criminal situations (Nye and Scocroft, pg.66). The problem of cybercrime has generate a great cognitive cyber stress to the entire world. The world can only deal with such problems by dealing with the cybercrime problems legally, legitimately, and in very organized way (Nye and Scocroft, pg.66).

Crafting effective domestic and international cyber policy

Policy implementation could be a very effective way of combating cybercrime problems. One of the main actions to combat cybercrimes is make some follow-ups and track source computers for evidence as part of the key policies within organizations and government agencies. In this case, keeping track on possible threat should include even people working within security agencies. According to William, Boni and Gerald (pg.92), people from within a given business or a governemnt agency among other organizations could be characterized by gread, financial pressures, jealousy, and other traits that could push them to initiate cybercrimes aginst such organizations. The best way out is to handle such people by keeping a close eye on them and deal with them according to the law (William, Boni and Gerald, pg.92).

From a law perspective, internet service providers in many countries are required to keep meaningful log-files within a given period of time. This is usually a requirement by law. Countries without such laws could implement the same to avoid the cultivation of cybercriminals (Parker, pg.47). Again, justice systems should create tough penalties on cybercrimes or increase such penalties if such penalties already exist. Such penalties could cover crimes such as the unauthorized use of computers, creation of obscene contents, hacking of websites, sending encrypted emails, posting threats, and sending harassment contents to people among other internet crimes like changing people’s passwords (Parker, pg.234). The main failure in these combating efforts includes the case of various companies and agencies that hardly keep update the I-way system updates. A major instance in this case is the US Department of Defense, which through negligence, millions of dollars are lost through cybercrime (William, Boni and Kovacich, pg.119). In general, the injuries caused by cybercrime should be compensated through the charges or penalties (William, Boni and Kovacich, pg.53).

Conclusion

Cybercrimes may seem meaningless to many people especially to those who have never faced the resulting effects. The problem is not only an individual issue or a national problem but it is also a global concern. It may come out that most of the cybercriminals are based in those countries where the local laws are hardly strict on such crimes. While education, technical, and internet skills are critical to every country’s economy, there should be some limits on the way people could technologically use their skills. The use of technology to harm other people should be curtailed as much as possible. The use of internet should be only based on good motives to all parties (Parker, pg.32). Again, given that efforts to combat cybercrimes would turn out to be successful, people have to assist their governments and the responsible authorities. The basic idea in this case is that a problem that is facing another person could possibly face any other individual irrespective of their locations. Again, people should be very conservative when using the internet, especially during online transactions or whenever personal or confidential details are required. A combined effort would be the best way forward to combating cybercrimes.

Works Cited

Burns, Nicholas and ‎Jonathon Price. Securing Cyberspace: A New Domain for National Security. Aspen Institute, 2012 . Print.

Carr , Jeffrey. Inside ‘cyber ‘warfare. 2011. Print.

Nye, Joseph S. and Brent Scowcroft. Securing Cyberspace, edited by Nicholas Burns & Jonathon Price. 2012. Print.

Parker, Donn B. Fighting Computer Crime. 1998. Print.

Wall, David S. Crime and the Internet . London: Routledge , 2001 . Print.

William, C., Dr. Boni and Gerald L. Kovacich. I-Way Robbery: Crime in the Internet . 1999 . Print.

William, C., Dr. Boni and Gerald L. Kovacich. Netspionage The global threat to information. 2000. Print.