Cyberwar

Cyber crime In the recent years, computer technology has had a great impact on the society, governments and businesses. The world-wide network of activities has changed the relationship between people and the physical world. Information is now easily transferable through the internet, which has been useful in business transactions and service delivery. On the other hand, increase in crime because of the internet access has become a matter of public concern. Criminal justice system has drawn its focus on computer related crimes. The crimes have increased public attention because computers have become the central areas of social connectivity to the people’s daily lives, which include record keeping functions, institutional finances, interpersonal communications, and personal finance. Because of the sufficient accessibility, internet has increased crimes and criminal offenses associated with the computer use. It is approximated that in 2001, 94 million citizens of the United States were able to access the internet (Mills 2012, p. 15). Commoditization of technology and efforts facilitating access to the internet has led to unrestricted use of internet by individuals disregarding the negativity it can have on their lives. This decrease in computing technology has created a gap between skilled and non-skilled users, thus leading to cybercrimes. Technology has introduced safeguards as well as vulnerabilities. It poses threats, and there are tools to deal with these threats. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee analyzed the dangers of the internet to the general public. According to the Department of Justice, computer crimes are violations of criminal laws involving knowledge of computer technology for their investigation, perpetration or prosecution. The numbers of crimes are as much as the criminals in the information technology. These criminals could be dissatisfied empolyees , youthful hackers, international spies and terrorists and the company insiders. The use of the new computer technology has given rise to the desire to understand, and determine cybercrimes. The attempt to quantify the number of cybercrimes is quite complicated. Garlik estimation of criminology to quantify the cybercrimes shows the following categories.
Offences against the Person This category involves the use of computer technology to cause personal injury or harm such as distress, anxiety or psychological harm. It includes the use of abusive language, threatening electronic mails, and posting insulting information online. In addition, in situations whereby the offender engage in offensive behaviors behind the mask of secrecy offered by the internet, this is considered to be criminal. Hate speech and crimes intimidating a person or group of people on the basis of actual and perceived membership of a target group defined in terms of political, religion, gender, race, belief or sexual orientation are also criminal offenses. Examples of hate crimes are the abusive, and unfair or unfavorable derogatory information distributed about the targeted group.
Financial Fraud This involves the use of deceptive information to material gain either directly or indirectly. Direct financial gain involves impersonation characteristics causing theft because of false identity and fraud to obtain money. Gaining indirectly involves assumption of information that secures the offenders to more lucrative opportunities for employment. Also the deceit may involve misrepresentation of identity of the party concerned. Because of this, identity theft may be synonymous with the financial fraud. This argument differs in some cases because identity theft assumes identity of another for whatever reasons. This can be financial fraud or not. A person assuming another’s identity to commit an offense will be categorized as identity fraud, but not a financial one. The two crimes are categorized as cybercrimes if they were committed through the internet or used online resources to assist in the criminal activity.
Computer Misuse
This is reserved for conduct lying within the computer misuse act 1994. It involves unauthorized access to the computer (basic hacking). It also involves unauthorized access to the system with an intention to committing further offenses (aggravated hacking). Unauthorized modification of computerized materials caused by viruses is also classified as a computer misuse (Finnie, Petee & Jarvis 2010, p. 11).
Sexual Offences
This category covers a range of conduct with objectively ascertainable elements of sex including grooming a child for sexual activity ( paedophilic ) that was declared criminal in 2003 by the sexual offense act. The ease of information transfer offered by the internet and largely unregulated makes it useful for those involved in such offenses.
The Cyber Crime Case
Cybercrimes have been caused by the flexibility and freedom, which companies get from hosting their software and service in the cloud. This is the process of cloud computing. This enables the criminals to conduct extremely automated fraud in online banking. This is because they do not undertake the necessary processing of their private information. According to Elinor Mill article dated 2nd July 2012, security and privacy specialists are worried of cyber-criminals who may attack the servers filing information in the cloud environments (Mills 2012, p. 15). Reports from the previous week from McAfee and Guardian Analytics showed that criminals were using the cloud communications to get more competence out of their companies. The analysts said that it is the first time that they are experiencing the leveraging cloud (Ponemon Institute 2012, p. 42).
The researchers argued that the highly complicated campaigns were targeted at withdrawing money out of the bank accounts that contained high balances in United States, South Africa and Europe through automated transfers. Online customers argue that online banking fraud began with a fishing email pretending to be a victim bank, and instructing the client to clink a ling and change his/her personal information. After performance of such as operation, Trojan was downloaded to the victim computer in the present version at the time. In corresponding versions, malware operated from the server.
The malware used the bank inject technology to enter into the bank’s site and overlay a page similar in appearance to that of the bank on the user’s browser. Behind the scene totally invisible by the victim, accounts were checked and the malware would transfer an amount of money specified by the criminals from the bank accounts (Finnie, Petee & Jarvis 2010, p. 15).
In the past, similar banking malware will process from the user’s personal computer. According to Contos, this transfer was done on the server within the cloud. The operations of McAfee and Guardian uncovered that the servers were positioned in the eastern states of the European countries. The locations of these servers were mostly at “blue-proof” ISPs with negligent policies relocated regularly to avoid detection. The servers seated within ISPs designed specifically to participate in the fraud. It was also evident that the criminals at one time also managed to by-pass the two factor authentication that was commonly used by the European online consumer banking (Ponemon Institute 2012, p. 46). They also swipe the cards using the card reader within the PC that give extra data proof evidence that a lawful user is tampering with the account. The authentication or the log in data is taken from the malware and transmitted to the server within a real time. The data is taken from the system and is validated against the victim’s accounts within seconds.
At least 60 servers were used in the action provided that the criminals who were able to automate the attacks, had much less manual intervention was required to attack and do things for example adjustment of the amount to steal for it to be below the fraud recognition levels. The server acts like a brain to undertake all the transactions within the bank account. Besides having the malware, it resides on the computer of the victim, and takes charge of the crime functions. For example, the theft of the data and its transfer to other places, whereby attack was undertaken by the server. Every intelligence personnel said that they should concentrate on the server side that they are using on the cloud. The criminals had nothing to change in the end-user side. They perform modifications on the server side. They still had threats on the user’s personal computers but it is much reduced in terms of intelligence than the past.
The malware can be simple in the victim’s computer and needs no updates to change the functional attacks, possibly done on the server. It is designed to make the criminal attack fast. According to Contos, these attacks are designated to be alive always because less activity to the end user’s PC can be detected. He forecasted that this is the prospect of malware operations. This is because most of the businesses use computer technology for convenience and efficient resource utilization. The malware being on the end users computer means that the criminals can use those PCs for great attacks and operations. They will install botnets to set up their individual servers and use victim’s computer for attacks (Ponemon Institute 2012, p. 51).
The lack of appreciation of the accompanied dangers hinders reporting and investigation to the criminal activities. People perceive that the misbehaviors associated with the internet use are not criminal. Most of the users are not even aware that such behaviors are illegal. Also, many people do not understand that designing of computer virus is a crime. There is the notion that the police will always be ignorant on the investigation to cybercrime. There is the National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) in the United Kingdom which is involved in investigating crimes related to the use of internet. Seriously organized crime agency (SOCA) does not mainly deal with the internet crime. According to the Fraud Act 2006, from April 2007, financial victims should notify the bank directly other than informing the police. The problems associated with this process of reporting crimes is that the banks will not consider the low valued crimes and will report them to the police, thus leading to increase in such activities. The issue of jurisdiction has become a confusing factor in the police department because of the increased international terrorism that has led to legal disparities among countries. Given the nature of internet, majority of the malicious activities originate outside the United Kingdom. It therefore calls for the extra territorial law to deal with the national security.
Cybercrimes are not limited within country’s boundaries. A criminal equipped with a computer connected to the internet has the capacity to oppress people governments and businesses worldwide. The criminals commit brutal crimes, contribute in global terrorism, traffic drugs, commit impersonation, send viruses to machines, distribute teenage pornography, steal scholarly belongings and trade secrets, and criminal access confidential and business computer systems. These criminals cannot be easily traced because they divert their communications through a number of ISPs.Considering a computer hacker in Columbia who diverts the communication network in Columbia, routes in various countries like Australia, Italy and Japan before accessing the organizational computer.
Conclusion
In such a case security measures will be improved in the above countries before the criminal gets to the Washington city. Such kinds of crimes have led to increase in international security. Law enforcement agencies should value the sovereignty of other states because the internet crimes are borderless. Foreign laws have co-operated in the efforts to fight the cybercrimes which has become so paramount. The major obstacle has been in the disparities in the legal systems in different countries. The council of European nations to fight against the cybercrimes formed a convention to combat the disparities in regulations.

References
Finnie, T, Petee, T & Jarvis, J 2010, ‘The Future Challenges of Cybercrime’, Proceedings of the Futures Working Group, Quantico, Virginia, Vol. 5, pp.1-22.
Mills, E 2012, Cybercrime moves to the cloud. Researchers say that criminals are moving their malware heavy lifting from end-user PCs to servers in the cloud, viewed 6 December 2012, <http://www.cnet.com.au/cybercrime-moves-to-the-cloud-339340622.htm>
Ponemon Institute 2012, The Impact of Cybercrime on Business Studies of IT practitioners in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Hong Kong and Brazil,viewed6December2012, http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressroom/checkpoint/document/download/resource_document/23476

References: Finnie, T, Petee, T &amp; Jarvis, J 2010, ‘The Future Challenges of Cybercrime’, Proceedings of the Futures Working Group, Quantico, Virginia, Vol. 5, pp.1-22. Mills, E 2012, Cybercrime moves to the cloud. Researchers say that criminals are moving their malware heavy lifting from end-user PCs to servers in the cloud, viewed 6 December 2012, &lt;http://www.cnet.com.au/cybercrime-moves-to-the-cloud-339340622.htm&gt; Ponemon Institute 2012, The Impact of Cybercrime on Business Studies of IT practitioners in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Hong Kong and Brazil,viewed6December2012, http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/pressroom/checkpoint/document/download/resource_document/23476