Computer Fraud and Crimes
Computer Fraud and Crimes
In the world of computers, computer fraud and computer crime are very prevalent issues facing every computer user. This ranges from system administrators to personal computer users who do work in the office or at home. Computers without any means of security are vulnerable to attacks from viruses, worms, and illegal computer hackers. If the proper steps are not taken, safe computing may become a thing of the past. Many security measures are being implemented to protect against illegalities.
Companies are becoming more aware and threatened by the fact that their computers are prone to attack. Virus scanners are becoming necessities on all machines. Installing and monitoring these virus scanners takes many man hours and a lot of money for site licenses. Many server programs are coming equipped with a program called "netlog." This is a program that monitors the computer use of the employees in a company on the network. The program monitors memory and file usage. A qualified system administrator should be able to tell by the amounts of memory being used and the file usage if something is going on that should not be. If a virus is found, system administrators can pinpoint the user who put the virus into the network and investigate whether or not there was any malice intended.
One computer application that is becoming more widely used and, therefore, more widely abused, is the use of electronic mail or email. In the present day, illegal hackers can read email going through a server fairly easily. Email consists of not only personal transactions, but business and financial transactions. There are not many encryption procedures out for email yet. As
Gates describes, soon email encryption will become a regular addition to email just as a hard disk drive has become a regular addition to a computer (Gates
p.97-98).
Encrypting email can be done with two prime numbers used as keys. The public key will be listed on the Internet or in an
In the world of computers, computer fraud and computer crime are very prevalent issues facing every computer user. This ranges from system administrators to personal computer users who do work in the office or at home. Computers without any means of security are vulnerable to attacks from viruses, worms, and illegal computer hackers. If the proper steps are not taken, safe computing may become a thing of the past. Many security measures are being implemented to protect against illegalities.
Companies are becoming more aware and threatened by the fact that their computers are prone to attack. Virus scanners are becoming necessities on all machines. Installing and monitoring these virus scanners takes many man hours and a lot of money for site licenses. Many server programs are coming equipped with a program called "netlog." This is a program that monitors the computer use of the employees in a company on the network. The program monitors memory and file usage. A qualified system administrator should be able to tell by the amounts of memory being used and the file usage if something is going on that should not be. If a virus is found, system administrators can pinpoint the user who put the virus into the network and investigate whether or not there was any malice intended.
One computer application that is becoming more widely used and, therefore, more widely abused, is the use of electronic mail or email. In the present day, illegal hackers can read email going through a server fairly easily. Email consists of not only personal transactions, but business and financial transactions. There are not many encryption procedures out for email yet. As
Gates describes, soon email encryption will become a regular addition to email just as a hard disk drive has become a regular addition to a computer (Gates
p.97-98).
Encrypting email can be done with two prime numbers used as keys. The public key will be listed on the Internet or in an
Cited: Bitter, Gary G., ed. The MacMillian Encyclopedia of Computers. MacMillian Publishing Company: New York, 1992. Gates, William. The Road Ahead. New York : Penguin Books, 1995. Hafner, Katie & John Markoff. Cyberpunk. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1991. Romney, Marshall. "Computer Fraud – What Can Be Done About It?" CPA Journal Vol. 65 (May 1995): p. 30-33.