Spam e-mail

E-mail has become one of the most popular Internet services for instant and convenient message delivery. The classic definition of spam is unsolicited bulk messages, that is, messages sent to multiple recipients who did not ask for them. The problems caused by spam are due to the combination of the unsolicited and bulk aspects; the quantity of unwanted messages swamps messaging systems and drowns out the messages that recipients do want.

The impact of spam on the Internet community is great, causing significant financial costs and losses in productivity. Spam creates problems such as cost shifting, fraud, resource wastage, and the displacement of legitimate mail. The proliferation of spam is also a potential threat to the credibility of e-mail as a reliable and efficient means of communication over the Internet.

The original impetus for spam was advertising. A famous early usenet spam was from a lawyer advertising immigration service (“green card lottery”) and early e-mail spams advertised computer equipment, purported blueprints for atomic bombs, and magazine subscriptions. Since spam is so cheap, and is often anonymous, it is also popular for marginally or completely illegal schemes including fake drugs, pump and dump stock touts, money mule recruiting, and advance fee fraud.

Spam can merely carry annoying but benign advertising; however, it can also be the initial contact for cybercriminals, such as the operators of a fraudulent scheme who use emails to solicit prospective victims for money or to commit identity theft by deceiving recipients into sharing personal and financial account information.
Spam e-mail

Cybercrime on physical site

Cybercrime resulting in property harm is generally carried out using cracking techniques and includes such common variations as:

*Flooding – a form of cyberspace vandalism. When a cracker floods a site using a technique called distributed denial-of-service or DDoS he or she plants software programs on large computers with high-speed connections to the internet. It will cause computer system overloaded and cease functioning.

*Virus and worm production and release – a form of cyberspace vandalism causing corruption possibly erasing of data. Virus is a self-replicating program. While worms is very similar to a vorus but it does not need a file to travel in a most definition agree that worms have the capacity to ravel autonomously.

*Spoofing – It is the act of assuming a fake identity, normally in order to trick another party into exchanging, submitting or accepting authentication or other confidential data. The act of web spoofing involves the redirection of a user's Internet browser to a given website when the user types in a similar URL address; this technique may be used by pornography websites to lure visitors to their sites.

*Phreaking – Phreakers use technology to obtain unauthorized access to the telephone system

*Infringing intellectual property right and copyright
Cybercrime on physical site

Cyber Crime definition

Cyber crime constitutes criminal acts, committed by way of computer networks that can be accomplished while sitting at a computer board. Ksehtri (2009) defined cybercrime as a criminal activity in which computers or computer networks are the principal means of committing an offense or violating laws, rules or regulation.

The awareness of security has since September 11 events increased in many ways - increased concerned over physical sites, increased concerns of securing networked infrastructure and changes in corporate attitude from being confident about their organization’s security and delaying spending on security, to seeing IT security as an essential capital investment.

Example of cyber crimes include gaining unauthorised access to computer file, denial-of-service-attacks, cyber-theft, cyber-trespass, cyber-obscenity, critical infrastructure attacks, online fraud, online money laundering, criminal uses of Internet communications, ID fraud, use of computers to further traditional crimes , and cyber-extortions.

A diverse range of acts such as disrupting the operation of remote computers with viruses, worms logic bombs, Trojan horses horses, visiting an obscene website and cyberstalking may qualify as a cybercrime.

There are many debates today among experts about what constitutes a computer-related crime or cyber crime. Cyber crime generally is understood to include traditional activities such as fraud, theft, or forgery whenever a computer is involved.

Society’ vital services and critical infrastructure: communications, finance, transportation, and utilities such as electricity, oil, gas and water rely on computer and computer networked. If these networked are damaged the nation will be disrupt.

Governments as well as business that own and operate banks, utility infrastructure, transportation systems, telecommunications networks and other critical systems, must be prepared for the possibility of a destructive attack in cyberspace. The cyber threat is out there, either directly or as collateral damage in other kinds of attacks.
Cyber Crime definition

What is cyber theft?

Cyber theft can be defined as the use of computer networks for criminal profits, Infringement of copyright, identity theft and internet securities fraud are example of cyber theft.

Many computer crimes involve the theft of money or goods or intellectual property. In the majority of cases, they are “inside jobs” that involve unauthorized network entry and fraudulent alternation of computer databases to cover the tracks of the employees involved.

This category includes cyber intrusion, but is also sometimes used to refer to any criminal theft, where a computer system or the internet is used as a means of perpetrating the crime.

One of the examples was involve the use of internet, such as the widely publicized theft of $11 million from Citibank in late 1994, Russian hacker Vladimir Levin and his accomplices in St. Petersburg used the Internet to electronically break into Citibank’s mainframe systems in New York.

They then succeed in transferring the funds from several Citibank accounts to their own account at banks in Finland, Israel, and California.

The new computer based technology allows criminals to operate in a more efficient and effective manner.

Cyber thieves now have the luxury of remaining anonymous, living in any part of the planet, conducting their business during the day, working the evening, working alone or in a group, and at the same time reaching a much wider number of potential victims than ever before.

In most case, the scope of such financial losses is much larger than the incidents reported. Most companies don’t reveal that they have been targets or victims of computer crimes.
What is cyber theft?

What is computer hacker?

In the computer security context, a hacker is a person who attempts to breach the security of computer system by access from a remote point, especially by guessing or otherwise obtaining a password.

The person had an instinctive knowledge enabling him or her to develop software apparently by trial and error.

The broadest term of hacker would be a computer expert who is capable of clever or novel solution to computer problems.

Hacking, in computerese, is the obsessive use of computers, or the unauthorized access and use of networked computer system. Illegal hackers (also called crackers) frequently assault the internet and other networks to steal or damage data and programs.

Although many person in the computer industry continue to use the term ‘hacker’ to pick out programmers of distinction, the term ‘hacker’ is now used by most person only to pick out persons who intrude upon systems and machines belonging to other people without any meaningful authorization.

Hackers can monitor E-mail, Web server access, or file transfer to extract passwords or steal network files, or to plant data that will cause a system to welcome intruders.

A hacker may also use remote services that allow one computer on a network to execute programs on another computer to gain privileged access within network.

Hackers, crackers and computer criminals have a growing palate of tactics and technologies that can used to achieve their purpose.

This include harvesting passwords from unsuspecting user, stepping stones that conceal the ultimate source of an intrusion and stolen storage space to serve as caches for among other things, attack programs, password files or stolen card credit numbers.

The good and bad hackers have similar personalities. What separate them is their ethics.
What is computer hacker?

Cyber crime in E-Business

Cyber crimes are on the increase bringing untold distress. It is a growing threat to society caused by the criminal or irresponsible actions of individuals who are taking advantage of the widespread use and vulnerability of computers and Internet and other networks. It thus presents major challenges to the ethical use of information technologies.

It has become one of the major security issues for the law enforcement community, industry, e-business judiciary and the academia.

Attacks on online banking customers and business by cyber criminals have brought about new security concerns and subsequent legislation to protect both business and the private individuals.

The most distinct nature of cyber crime from traditional one is borderless and anonymous. By the help of pervasive network technology cyber crime is ramping over areas, regions and countries.

Cyber crime is becoming one of the Net’s growth businesses. Today criminals are doing everything from stealing intellectual property and committing fraud to unleashing viruses and committing acts of cyber terrorisms.

Personal information and account details have been stolen over the internet. Illegal transactions have siphoned money from personal and business accounts to foreign third party accounts.

The most popular form of fraud, and one that is difficult for auction website operators to controls, is called shilling. This is the process of bidding up the price of an auction item by people who have no intention of buying it.

Cyber crime poses serious threats to the integrity, safety, and survival of most E-business systems, and thus makes the development of effective security methods a top priority.

In the past, business created private networks, which were secure LAN systems that were closed to outside access. Only computers that were actually connected to the private networked by wires could access the information.

The only real concern was that someone with access to the system, such as employee, might violate the system’s security, copy information and remove it from the business’s premises without authorization. 

Typically, e-business security has focused on protection from cyber crime via a broad range of security means, namely the implementation of firewall, authentication, encryption, antivirus software, intrusion detection and penetration testing.
Cyber crime in E-Business