cyber crime and security cybercrime or electronic crime generally refers to criminal activity where a computer or network is the source, tool, target, or place of a crime. These categories are not exclusive and many activities can be characterized as falling in one or more category. Jurisdiction, and provides the legal base for prosecuting such crimes has been developed at both the federal and state level. Many federal law enforcement agencies have departments that attempt to combat a broad range of computer crimes from computer intrusions to intellectual property theft. There are no precise, reliable statistics on the amount of computer crime and the economic loss to victims, partly because many of these crimes are apparently not detected by victims, many of these crimes are never reported to authorities, and partly because the losses are often difficult to calculate. Nevertheless, there is a consensus among both law enforcement personnel and computer scientists who specialize in security that both the number of computer crime incidents and the sophistication of computer criminals is increasing rapidly. Estimates are that computer crime costs victims in the usa at least us$ 5 10 8 /year, and the true value of such crime might be substantially higher.

Experts in computer security, who are not attorneys, speak of information warfare. While such information warfare is just another name for computer crime, the word warfare does fairly denote the amount of damage inflicted on society. Which includes suggestions for increasing the security and reliability of personal computers, as well as links to websites on computer viruses, computer crime, and anti virus and firewall software. Two comments on word usage in this essay:

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to some professional computer programmers, the word hacker refers to a skilled programmer and is neither pejorative nor does it refer to criminal activity.

However, to most users of english, the word hacker refers to computer criminals, and that is the usage that i have adopted in this essay. I do not have the spare time that would be required for a thorough search and analysis of reported cases and statutes on computer crime, as well as newspaper accounts most criminal proceedings are resolved without generating any judicial decision that is reported in legal databases or books , so my revisions are mostly generalizations. There are three major classes of criminal activity with computers:

when lay people hear the words computer crime , they often think of obscene pictures available on the internet, or solicitation of children for sex by pedophiles via chat rooms on the internet. The legal problem of obscenity on the internet is mostly the same as the legal problem of obscenity in books and magazines, except for some technical issues of personal jurisdiction on the internet. I have discussed obscenity on the internet in my may 1997 essay on law amp technology and i have nothing further to say about obscenity in this essay on computer crime.

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Similarly, many crimes involving computers are no different from crimes without computers: the computer is only a tool that a criminal uses to commit a crime. For example,

using a computer, a scanner, graphics software, and a high quality color laser or ink jet printer for forgery or counterfeiting is the same crime as using an old fashioned printing press with ink. stealing a laptop computer with proprietary information stored on the hard disk inside the computer is the same crime as stealing a briefcase that contains papers with proprietary information. Using the internet or online services to solicit sex is similar to other forms of solicitation of sex, and so is not a new crime. in contrast to merely using computer equipment as a tool to commit old crimes, this essay is concerned with computer crimes that are new ways to harm people. There are many instances of messages sent in the name of someone who neither wrote the content nor authorized the sending of the message.

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For example:

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posting messages in an internet newsgroup or online bulletin board with a false author's name that is intended to harm the reputation of the real person of that name. these acts might be punishable by existing criminal statutes that prohibit impersonation, forgery, deceit, or fraud. However, a judge might decide that the specific language in old statutes about writing or signature does not apply to e mail. Rather than write new statutes for forged e mail addresses or unauthorized sending of e mail in someone else's name, i would prefer that legislatures broaden the existing criminal statutes for analogous crimes with paper and ink.

Similar issues arise in both: 1 fictitious from: addresses in some unsolicited commercial e mail, also called spam or junk e mail, and 2 fictitious source ip addresses in denial of service attacks. Unauthorized use of computers tends generally takes the following forms:

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in 19, the melissa virus infected a possibly confidential document on a victim's computer, then automatically sent that document and copy of the virus via e mail to other people. Subsequently, the sircam and klez malicious programs made a similar release of possibly confidential documents from a victim's computer. These malicious programs are a new way to release confidential information from a victim's computer, with the confidential information going not to the author of the malicious program, but to some person unknown to the author of the malicious program.

changing data. for example, change a grade on a school transcript, add money to a checking account, etc. deleting data. deleting entire files could be an act of vandalism or sabotage. denying service to authorized users. on a modern time sharing computer, any user takes some time and disk space, which is then not available to other users. during 1950 1975, computer programs and data were generally stored on cardboard cards with holes punched in them. If a vandal were to break into an office and either damage or steal the punch cards, the vandal could be adequately punished under traditional law of breaking and entering, vandalism, or theft.

However, after about 1975, it became common to enter programs and data from remote terminals a keyboard and monitor using a modem and a telephone line. This same technology allowed banks to retrieve a customer's current balance from the bank's central computer, and merchants to process credit card billing without sending paper forms. But this change in technology also meant that a criminal could alter data and programs from his home, without physical entry into the victim's building. The traditional laws were no longer adequate to punish criminals who used computer modems. Most unauthorized use of a computer is accomplished by a person in his home, who uses a modem to access a remote computer. The classic definition of a burglary is: the breaking and entering of a building with the intent to commit a felony therein.

In traditional burglaries, the felony was typically larceny, an unlawful taking of another person's property. However, in the unauthorized use of another's computer, the criminal enters the computer via the telephone lines, which is not breaking into the building. Either the burglary statute needed to be made more general or new criminal statute s needed to be enacted for unauthorized access to a computer. To successfully use a remote computer, any user including criminals must have both a valid user name and valid password. There are several basic ways to get these data:

Not only should you refuse to provide such information, but please report such requests to the management of the online service or the local police, so they can be alert to an active criminal. Search user's offices for such data, as many people post their user name and password on the side of their monitor or filing cabinet, where these data can be conveniently seen. Write a program that tries different combinations of user names and passwords until one is accepted.