Cyber crime!! Cyber Security!!…?? No it’s not a buzz word, this is a serious concern. (Part 1)
Cyber crime constitutes a serious problem for India even outside of crisis periods. India was among the top five most targeted countries in the world by cyber criminals in recent years. With this criticality in mind there has to have Cyber Security awareness among every individual.
What is Cyber Crime?
Cyber-crimes or computer-oriented crime is an unlawful acts that involves a use of computer either as a tool or a target or both for commission of a crime. Cyber crime is committed by cyber criminals or hackers who want to make money which is one of the reasons. Rarely, cyber crime aims to damage computers for reasons other than profit these could be political or personal. Cyber crime is either carried out by individuals or organizations.
Types of Cyber Crime:
Cyber crime in India has surged amidst the lock-down caused by corona virus pandemic. Lock-down has led an opportunities to cyber criminals to carry multiple attacks against individuals and organization.
COVID-related Cyber Scams which are extensively taking place were fake websites like “PM cares corona virus funds” have emerged and loss of thousands of dollars took place for many individuals. Personal data also continues to be an attractive target during the pandemic causing increase in identity thefts.
Few months back, a state-sponsored hacking group supported by Pakistan conducted a series of ransomware and phishing attacks aimed at stealing highly sensitive defense, security and diplomatic information under the disguise of corona virus health advisories, this is how serious it is.
Cyber-crime against person:
§ Cyber stalking: Cyber stalking involves following a person online anonymously to follow their activities. Usually, the cyber stalker harasses their victim and makes the person feel afraid or concerned for their safety.
§ Hacking: Hacking involves the partial or complete acquisition of certain functions within a system, network, or website. It also aims to access to important data and information, breaching privacy.
§ Online fraud / Scams: These are usually in the form of ads or spam emails that include promises of rewards or offers of unrealistic amounts of money. Online scams include enticing offers that are “too good to be true” and when clicked on can cause malware to interfere and compromise information.
§ Defamation: Cyber defamation is publishing of defamatory material against another person with the help of computers or internet. The harm caused to a person reputation / Goodwill by publishing a defamatory statement about him / her on a website is widespread and irreparable as the information is available to the entire world.
§ Child pornography: Porn content is very accessible now because of the internet. Most countries have laws that penalize child pornography. Basically, this cyber crime involves the exploitation of children in the porn industry. Child pornography is a $3-billion-a-year industry.
§ Cyber-bullying: Cyber bullying is one of the most rampant crimes committed in the virtual world. It is a form of bullying carried over to the internet. On the other hand, global leaders are aware of this crime and pass laws and acts that prohibit the proliferation of cyber bullying.
§ Cyber Squatting: It generally refers to the practice of buying up domain names that use the names of existing businesses with the intent to sell the names for a profit to those businesses. Hacker uses Cyber Squatting or Typo Squatting technique to trick victim into visiting a look-a-like malicious website either to generate hits on the website, install malware onto victim’s machine and basically it gets combined with Phishing emails to carry out effective attack campaign.
§ Cyber Vandalism: Cyber Vandalism means to steal some data from someone’s computer or damaging all stored data from someone’s computers by sending some malicious code. With cyber vandalism techniques, people can easily crash your computer from remote locations and they can also edit or use your important database for their own use. This is an unethical practice which is mostly target to the corporate organizations and government agencies.
§ Intellectual Property theft: Cyber theft of Intellectual Property means stealing of copyrights, trade secrets, patents etc., using internet and computers. Copyrights and trade secrets are the two forms of Intellectual Property that is frequently stolen. For example, stealing of software, a unique recipe of a well-known dish, business strategies etc. Generally, the stolen material is sold to the rivals or others for further sale of the product. This may result in the huge loss to the company who originally created it.
§ Phishing: Phishers act like a legitimate company or organization. They use “email spoofing” to extract confidential information such as credit card numbers, social security number, passwords, etc. They send out thousands of phishing emails carrying links to fake websites. Users will believe these are legitimate, thus enters their personal / financial information leading to compromise.
§ Email bombing and spamming: Email bombing is characterized by an abuser sending huge volumes of email to a target address resulting in victim’s email account or mail servers crashing. In many instances, the messages will be large and constructed from meaningless data in an effort to consume additional system and network resources.
§ Identity Theft: Identify theft is a specific form of fraud in which cyber criminals steal personal data, including passwords, data about the bank account, credit cards, debit cards and other sensitive information. Through identity theft, criminals can steal money, created a fake documents, etc.
§ Software Piracy: The internet is filled with torrents and other programs that illegally duplicate original content, including songs, books, movies, albums, and software. This is a crime as it translates to copyright infringement. Due to software piracy, companies and developers encounter huge cut down in their income because their products are illegally reproduced.
§ Social Engineering: Social engineering is a method in which cyber criminals make a direct contact with you through phone calls, emails, or even in person. Basically, they will also act like a legitimate company as well. They will befriend you to earn your trust until you will provide your important information and personal data.
§ Crypto jacking: Crypto jacking also called as malicious crypto mining is the unauthorized use of someone’s computer to mine cryptocurrency. Hackers do this by either getting the victim to click on a malicious link in an email that loads Crypto mining code on the computer or by infecting a websites with malicious adversaries using JavaScript code that auto-executes once loaded in the victim’s browser. This is a profitable way of mining cryptocurrency where hackers mine cryptocurrency using resources they do not own.
§ Ransomware: A Ransomware is type of malicious code use for cyber extortion by hackers. This malware encrypts all files from victims computer once infected. The attacker then demands a ransom from the victim to restore access to the data upon payment. The victims of the ransomware attack is shown with the instruction for how to pay ransom amount to get the decryption keys payable to hacker’s payment mode or either via Crypto currency like bitcoin.
Cyber-crime against government:
§ Cyber Warfare: Cyber warfare involves the actions by a nation-state sponsor or international organizations to attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks infrastructure through computer viruses, malware, and botnets to perform denial-of-service or other cyber-attacks.
§ Cyber Terrorism: Cyber terrorism acts often aim to achieve political or ideological advantages by means of intimidation, fear and threat. Cyber terrorism expands to cover the terrorist activities like intentional disruption of computer networks through using various tools like worms, viruses, phishing activities and various other malicious software and programming scripts.
Cyber-crime against society at large:
§ Online Gambling: Online gambling is the hot bed for criminal this days which allows cyber criminals to hide their illicit gains, black money or even money laundering attempts from the police. All of this because the anonymity users can enjoy, as in some instances, gamblers are not even required to give any personal information when logging into sites also the server Geo-location on which this websites are hosted kept anonymous.
§ Cyber Trafficking: Cyber trafficking should essentially be understood as human trafficking that is committed with the help of digital means. Cyber traffickers may use online chatroom's, social media, online employment agencies or forged immigration assistance websites to recruit potential victims. They might use online platforms accessible via deep web or dark web to offer the services of their victims and connect them with clients and customers. These services range from forced prostitution, child pornography, mail-order brides, forced labor to the vending of babies or human organs. Furthermore, traffickers might use Internet technology to control their victims, for example with cell phones or webcams.
Why Cyber Crime happening?
One of the main reason of rapid surge in the cases of cyber-crimes today is due to our dependency on technology and internet, even for the most basic things like shopping, making online payment, ordering food, etc. and with such uncontrollable dependency there comes a risk were criminals definitely take advantage of. Isn’t that True! Some more reasons are listed below:
§ Lack of awareness among people about the technology they are using.
§ Obsession of posting everything about oneself on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snap-chat, leads to sharing way more information about one’s life than required. For a hacker all this information is profiling of victim before an actual attack implementation against someone.
§ Easy money without revealing the criminal’s identity as hacker uses hacked computers or fake or stolen I.P. Address.
§ Complex technologies and coding increase the chances of error while investigation which criminals take advantage of.
But there is still a question, “why people don’t report Cyber Crime?”
May be because of fear of reputation or goodwill loss in society or workplace, they fear of legal procedure they have to go through while in process of investigation, etc.
To be continued…
Part 2: While consist of Cyber Law in India, Cyber Security Awareness and How to report a complaint.
