Computer Crime
Computer Crime
This type of crime is the illegal exploitation of computer technologies, usually involving the Internet, to support crimes such as fraud, identity theft, sharing of information, and embezzlement.
Exactly what is illegal varies greatly from state to state. Consequently, the growth of international data communications and in particular the Internet has made these crimes both more common and more difficult to police. Luckily there are people fighting computer crime and it is taken very seriously by government agencies. In particular the U.S. Department of Justice has an extensive computer forensics team.
Computer crime can be broken down into two basic categories. Crimes that are aimed at IT systems, and crimes that turn IT systems into weapons to target other systems and information.
Examples of crimes aimed at IT systems are:
- Unauthorized access to or modification of programs (software cracking and hacking).
- Spamming wherever outlawed completely or where regulations controlling it are violated.
- Deliberate circumvention of computer security systems.
- Writing or spreading computer viruses or worms.
- Denial-of-service attack, where company websites are flooded with service requests and their website is overloaded and either slowed or crashes completely.
Examples of crimes which use IT systems as weapons are:
- Fraud achieved by the manipulation of computer records.
- Intellectual property theft, including software piracy.
- Industrial espionage by means of access to or theft of computer materials.
- Identity theft where this is accomplished by use of fraudulent computer transactions.
- Salami slicing is the practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities.
- Making and digitally distributing child pornography.
Most Common Computer Crimes
Hacking. Breaking into a computer system to gain an unauthorized access is known as hacking. This entails defeating the security capabilities of a computer system in order
This type of crime is the illegal exploitation of computer technologies, usually involving the Internet, to support crimes such as fraud, identity theft, sharing of information, and embezzlement.
Exactly what is illegal varies greatly from state to state. Consequently, the growth of international data communications and in particular the Internet has made these crimes both more common and more difficult to police. Luckily there are people fighting computer crime and it is taken very seriously by government agencies. In particular the U.S. Department of Justice has an extensive computer forensics team.
Computer crime can be broken down into two basic categories. Crimes that are aimed at IT systems, and crimes that turn IT systems into weapons to target other systems and information.
Examples of crimes aimed at IT systems are:
- Unauthorized access to or modification of programs (software cracking and hacking).
- Spamming wherever outlawed completely or where regulations controlling it are violated.
- Deliberate circumvention of computer security systems.
- Writing or spreading computer viruses or worms.
- Denial-of-service attack, where company websites are flooded with service requests and their website is overloaded and either slowed or crashes completely.
Examples of crimes which use IT systems as weapons are:
- Fraud achieved by the manipulation of computer records.
- Intellectual property theft, including software piracy.
- Industrial espionage by means of access to or theft of computer materials.
- Identity theft where this is accomplished by use of fraudulent computer transactions.
- Salami slicing is the practice of stealing money repeatedly in extremely small quantities.
- Making and digitally distributing child pornography.
Most Common Computer Crimes
Hacking. Breaking into a computer system to gain an unauthorized access is known as hacking. This entails defeating the security capabilities of a computer system in order
Bibliography: Computer Security, by Dieter Gollman Computer Security Basics, by Debby Russell http://www.crime-research.org/ http://www.buzzle.com/ http://www.techiwarehouse.com/ http://www.anti-phishing.info/ http://www.worldsecuri