The Threats of Cyber Crime free essay sample

The hackers that were once just bored 13year olds holed up in their bedrooms, playing with computers and testing their abilities are now cyber criminals, using their college learned computer skills to steal millions of dollars. What once made everyone fear for their email accounts, MySpace and Facebook pages, have now upgraded to cyber terrorism and it only takes a click of a mouse. Cyber-crime doesn’t only affect businesses; it can also destroy our personal lives. Cyber-crime is a crime committed online. Sometimes it can be stealing someone’s username and password to an Internet site. One friend might think it’s funny to try and login on another friend’s website and upload incriminating photos or videos of them. It could also be a group of people who find each other through chat rooms, who plan on hacking into the CIA’s database. Two hacker groups that have been in the news lately, Anonymous and LulzSec, have recently hacked into 77 police databases in the United States. Once hacked, they released all the information of anyone who has filed a complaint to the police. This also included anyone who wanted to stay anonymous and credit card information they found on file. The reason these groups committed such cyber-crime was because the FBI has been conducting investigations on the members of these groups. They released a statement with the leaked data stating they felt no sympathy for what they’ve done (Swaine, 2011). These hacker groups can be a very dangerous sort. During the riots in Britain, a conservative member of Parliament had death threats emailed to her children. This occurred because she urged social networks to be taken down while the riots continued. It’s assumed that the hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec ent them, but they haven’t claimed any responsibility for them as of yet (Brit MP says hackers threatened her kids, 2011). Investigators are skeptical thought because these groups have yet to make any death threats. Cyber-crime is now an underground economy pulling in a $100 billion dollars annually, worldwide. In this day and age, internet merchants are becoming more and more popular. There was a time when seein g the UPS man drop a package off was exciting. It meant a family member sent a present or that something special came. Now people are getting packages every day instead of going to the mall or local shopping center. Society today is even able to order all household groceries online. But in order to do so, a lot of times people have to pay for what they order through Paypal. com. PayPal. com cited a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that showed losses to cyber-crime totaled at $63 million in 2010. (Internet Crime Caution Alarm Over $63m Cyber Sting, 2011) The definition of cyber-terrorism is the use of computer network tools to shut down critical national infrastructures (such as energy, transportation, government operations) or to coerce or intimidate a government or civilian population. The premise of cyber terrorism is that as nations and critical infrastructure became more dependent on computer networks for their operation, new vulnerabilities are created (Lewis, 2002) When doing a Google search of cyber-crime, 10. 4 million webpages came up (Coleman, 2011). The bigger the businesses that are hacked, the more mainstream cyber-crime becomes. The most threatening part of cyber-crime above all else, is that it funds terrorism. Al Qaeda’s Chief Cyber Terrorist was arrested in his London loft with the data of 30,000 credit cards, all of which he was using to fund his operations (Coleman, 2011). Cyber-crime has become the most threatening crime in so many ways, because it can be linked in one way or another to other crimes. And worst of all, society isn’t even in a position to defend itself against it yet. An article published in the Wall Street Journal quoted the Pentagon stating â€Å"If a cyber-attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a use of force consideration, which could merit retaliation. (Pentagon: Cyber Attacks Can Count As Act Of War, 2011) There have been recent attacks on the Pentagons computer systems, which has created urgency for a better approach to keep the hackers out. There have been reports stating that the United States Government plans to spend $13. 3 billion by 2015 to defend against cyber-crime. In the fall of 2010 the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance (ICSPA) was formed. They are a global not-for-profit organization â€Å"established to channel funding, expertise and assistance directly to assist law enforcement cyber-crime units in both domestic and international markets. (Coleman, 2011) In April of 2011, Sony Online Entertainment was hacked. The attack and intrusion could end up costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars. When the company announced they had been hacked, share prices dropped 30 percent. â€Å"It seems no fraud monitoring services are currently being offered: this may be a sign that Sony is not yet confident what accounts the hacker gained access to, and so is not willing to offer such a service to 70 million + users until they know who has been affected, when such a service could cost over $100m† said Matthew Norris, e-risk and privacy expert at specialist insurer Hiscox. (FOi: Future amp; Options Intelligence, 2011) One of the best ways to protect from cyber-crime at home is to make sure the wireless Internet is protected with a password so it’s †Å"secure†. Anyone can hack into a home network using a cell phone device or PDA and confiscate all the email passwords and bank account information of their victims. There have also been suggestions of using at least one capital letter in your password or a mix of letters and numbers. Also, don’t use anything that someone might be able to guess, such as a birthday, anniversary date, children’s names, etc. In the world of E-Commerce, protecting client’s information is critical to a business’s success. Fraud filters can be put in place, as well as insuring the company is P. C. I. (Payment Card Industry) compliant. To become P. C. I compliant, the E-Commerce company cannot retain client credit card data such as credit card number, expiration date or ccv code. In place of this, the company can use tokenization practices. Tokenization practices assign the credit card information to a specific token so that instead of handing over the full credit card information, a token is applied to the client’s credit card information. At the point of sale, the token is passed over to the payment processor; the payment is applied and given back to the merchant. A token has no defined value, in place of the true data that does have value. That way if a system is hacked, the tokens are taken, not the actual data. Some people might say that political crime or financial crime is the most threatening, for obvious reasons. Political crime effects our government and financial crimes can destroy our economy. Currency counterfeiting and money laundering are both big issues when it comes to financial crimes. But in researching the effects of financial crime, it comes right back to cyber-crime with data fraud and spam. With the increasing technology, committing a financial crime will also be considered committing a cyber-crime because the Internet is used for everything from purchases, to storing consumer’s information. Political crime on the other hand, can still be committed as an act in itself. Espionage, treason or any other act committed against the government or state doesn’t have to be done through the Internet. Terrorism, as the 10 year anniversary of September 11th approaches, is also a very devastating political crime. It took the lives of thousands of people. It destroyed families who lost loved ones; and it destroyed the people who survived. Yes it made history, but it destroyed a landmark, it started the onslaught of the recession the United States is suffering from currently. Besides the thousands of people that were killed onsite that day, the â€Å"War against Terrorism† has taken thousands of soldier’s lives who were defending their country. Political crime comes in at a very close second, if not at a tie, for the most threatening crime. Cyber crime can also be committed when a cell phone with wireless internet is used to engage in unlawful sexual acts. In the case United States v. Kramer, the defendant pled guilty to transporting a minor across interstate commerce with the intent to commit criminal sexual activity. The defendant’s cell phone was used to make phone calls and send text messages to the victim. Statute 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1) was broad enough to allow the U. S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri to sufficiently show how the defendants cell phone could be considered a â€Å"computer† because it had internet access. Kramer appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, but the judgment of the district court was affirmed (United States v. Kramer, 2011). Statute 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1) states whoever intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access and thereby contains information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, information from any department or agency of the United States, or information from any protected computer is committing fraud. The punishment for committing these acts can be a fine or imprisonment for no more than 5 years. In Phoenix, Arizona; the father of a 14 year old girl found text messages on her cell phone from a 20 year old man. The text messages that were sent were inappropriate messages about sex, and the victim admitted that the suspect also inappropriately touched her months back. If those text messages hadn’t been noticed, these crimes committed against a minor would have gone unnoticed. The suspect, Ethan Cook, was booked at the County Jail on three counts of child molestation, four counts of sexual abuse and one count of luring a minor for sexual exploitation (Fishman, 2010). The new technology that society uses makes everything so much more convenient, but, in the wrong hands can also create even more danger. Children at the age of 5 are given cell phones to appease them in public and at home. Parents used to worry about parental controls on the computers their children were using, because the dangers lurked in chat rooms and unwanted email. Now these children of the same age have personal cell phones to do all the social networking they want, with no cares in the world. Cyber-crime takes place with the spam mail in an email account, or a politician or celebrity’s risque photos posted all over the internet without consent. It affects the kids in high school who trust the wrong people with the wrong secrets or even gossip in the workplace. Too much time spent surfing around for email newsletters can often lead to strange emails from people claiming to be priests from other countries, or claims for large sums of money. They ask for the personal information of their victim and sometimes even lead them out to whatever country the scam is coming from. Then they take all of their victims’ money and leave them stranded. Cyber crime is committed when a computer is used to search for child pornography or a cell phone with internet capabilities is used to sexually harass another person. When a person accesses a business’s computer without authorization, or when a death threat is emailed. The possibilities of cyber-crime are endless and no matter how cyber crime is used, it always ends up hurting someone. References 18 U. S. C. S.  § 1030(e)(1)