Computer Crime-Yet Another Forms
Computer crime is going vast day by day. There are now a number of ways in which the computer attackers can have impact on the lives of other individuals . So, computer crime and some of their forms are upcoming topic for group discussion which are to be discussed one by one. The use of internet for terrorist purpose is called as Cyber terrorism. The ease of access of internet, vast audience and easily available information has led to the advantage of individuals or groups of individuals committed to ruin the peace of the society by attempting terrorist activities by the use of internet. Cyber terrorism is sometimes also referred to as electronic terrorism.
Computer Crime Investigation
A cyber terrorist attack is aimed to cause physical violence, unlike denial of service or virus/worm attack It is one of the most dreaded threat. In more literal terms, Cyber terrorism is the premeditated use of disruptive activities. In cyber space with the intention to further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives, or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such activities. Some of the examples to illustrate cyber-terrorism are; In 2001, hackers broke into the US justice departments website and replaced the website’s seal with a swastika, dubbed the agency as United States department of injustice” and filled the page with obscene pictures.
Another incident of Cyber terrorism is evident in the year 1999, NATO computers were blasted with e-mail bombs and hit with denial of services attacks by hackers protesting the NATO bombings.
Web-jacking, another form of Computer crime, has derived its name from hijacking. In web-jacking, hacker acquires the control and access over the website of another person. The perpetrators have either a monetary or political purposes which try to satiate by holding the owners of website to ransom. Web-jacking takes place when the administrator of the website loses hold of its username and password. Computers recognize usernames and passwords not people, so if a hacker gets hold of the username and password then he gets the control of the website and hence he can do anything with the website rendering administrator of the website helpless.
An incident illustrating web-jacking was reported in USA, where the owner of the hobby website for children lost access to her website, the hackers changed some of its contents which resulted in serious injuries of children.
E-mail fraud yet another form of Computer crime is prevalent these days. E-mail is an inexpensive and popular method for sending fraudulent messages to a large number of people. Most fraud is carried out by people obtaining access to account numbers and passwords. Fraudulent messages involves asking for personal information and sending cash, one must never respond to such e-mails. E-mail fraud gives its way to lottery scams, wherein recipients gets messages of winning a large sum of money and are asked to send in their bank account details. It is believed that every year thousands of people are defrauded of thousands of billions through these scams.
To conclude, the only way of being protected from these computer crimes is awareness and not security against these crimes.
You may also like to visit:
- World Cyber Crime Cases
- Ethical Hacking as a Shield against Cyber Crime
- Boons and Banes of Social Networking Sites
Share your views with us through Comment Section, given below the post.
« Dealing with Competition Top Polytechnic Colleges in Goa »
Tell us Your Queries, Suggestions and Feedback