BY:

NEHA MAURYA
ISABELLA THOBURN COLLEGE

cyber crime encompasses any criminal act dealing with computers and networks called hacking. Additionally, cyber crime also includes traditional crimes conducted through the internet.

Cyber crime sweep nets over 100 arrests Federal authorities have rounded up and arrested more than 125 individuals on charges including identity theft and computer intrusion as part of a nationwide crackdown on Internet crime.

FREQUENTLY USED CYBER CRIMES !!!!!!

HACKING VIRUS/WORM ATTACKS EMAIL BOMBING DATA DIDDLING DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS SALAMI ATTACKS

The term "hacker" used to mean computer programmer. Today it is used for persons who use computers to commit crime. Hacking raises several legal issues and jeopardizes privacy and security. It also raises questions on just how secure government, business, and private computers really are. It is argued that governments and businesses are already too dependent on computers.

Virus/worm attacks
Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to. They merely make functional copies of themselves and do this repeatedly till they eat up all the available space on a computer's memory.

Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it.

The famous I LOVE YOU VIRUS

E-mail bombing
Email bombing refers to sending a large number

of emails to the victim resulting in the victim's email account (in case of an individual) or mail servers (in case of a company or an email service provider) crashing.

Data diddling
This kind of an attack involves altering raw data just before it is processed by a computer and then changing it back after the processing is completed. Electricity Boards in India have been victims to data diddling programs inserted when private parties were computerizing their systems.

Denial of Service Attacks

This involves flooding a computer resource with more requests than it can handle. This causes the resource (e.g. a web server) to crash thereby denying authorized users the service offered by the resource. Another variation to a typical denial of service attack is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack wherein the perpetrators are many and are geographically widespread.

Salami Attacks
These attacks are used for the commission of financial crimes. The key here is to make the alteration so insignificant that in a single case it would go completely unnoticed.
Logic bombs are programs, which are activated on the occurrence of a particular predefined event. The logic bomb was programmed to take ten cents from all the accounts in the bank and put them into the account of the person whose name was alphabetically the last in the bank's rosters. Then he went and opened an account in the name of Ziegler. The amount being withdrawn from each of the accounts in the bank was so insignificant that neither any of the account holders nor the bank officials noticed the fault.

Beware! Cyber Criminals are on the prowl

Computer related crimes literally have no boundaries. Therefore it is important to answer these questions: What kind of cyber crimes are mostly prevalent in India? Do the Cases of Cyber crime on the rise?

TABLE:1

Are these crimes punishable and if so under what Act? What do you mean by cyber murder? How terrorists can misuse it? How do you smoke out cyber criminals? Can this kind of cases be policed?

The most common are e-mail based crimes in India. Like one we had in Bangalore, in which whenever the marriage of a girl used to get fixed up, the perspective groom family used to get a defamatory e-mail saying that the girl is of loose character, resulting in breaking of the marriage of the girl. Other common in India are :

Drug dealing: narcotic drugs are sold on auction sites under innocuous-sounding names. It can be 50 grams of honey for 50 grams of cocaine. Money laundering: E-gold site where hawala transactions are done in broad daylight. You are given tips of how to trade in gold an make illegal pots of money.

Forgery: sites that teach students how to use high-end drum scanners for creating look-alike certificates using Microsoft word!

The deliberate creation and exploitation of fear

Cyber Crimes and Terrorism

Terrorists can play havoc by the using a technology called steganography. Terrorists like transmission of Osama bin Laden routinely secret codes communicate with their global cronies by encrypting messagesconcealed in into image files, accessible to pictures. only to those with the password. Therefore, that 3624-36 bimbo you last saw on a site or that picture of Aishwarya Rai you downloaded from the net might actually have contained a devastating message in codes. There are over 50 sites which give you the recipe for making RDX bombs.

MOST COMMON COMPUTER CRIMES AND SECURITY BREACHES :2003-2006(%)

Goa Police constitute Cyber Crime Cell

With the cyber crimes raising its ugly head in the state, Goa Police have constituted Cyber Crime cell in Panaji to deal with the hi-tech crimes. The Cell is relying on the expertise of Pune based Asian school of cyber laws for technical support.

Why are cyber crimes so rampant.

Given the unrestricted number of free Web sites, the Internet is undeniably open to exploitation. Known as cyber crimes. While the worldwide scenario on cyber crime looks bleak, the situation in India isn't any better in india. Indian corporate and government sites have been attacked or defaced more than 780 times between February 2000 and December 2002. The Indian cyber crimes are punishable under the Information Technology Act, 2000 with 10 years in prison for hacking and fines of crore of rupees for passing viruses.

How do the cops smoke out cyber criminals?

There was this case in the U.S. where the police had closed in on a cyber criminal they arrested, confiscated his computer system and taken both to the police station. When they set up the system in the station to check out the files, it was all-blank. What they did not realise was he had set up magnetic coils in his doorway and once the computer was taken through this strong magnetic field, it had erased all the files in his system. There was no proof of what he had committed and he went scot-free. Interestingly, if you want to wipe an incriminating floppy clean, all you need do is place it close to a cellular phone or even a hot cup of coffee. Chances are that the strong magnetic fields they create will interfere with the floppy and corrupt it. A CD, of course, is more robust customer.

Cyber policing: Setting a thief to catch another

Who better than a burglar to help you master the art of burglary? So think our police too, when it comes to learning about cyber policing.

Indias first exclusive cyber police station in some cities is all set to hire some ethical hackers to crack cyber crimes involving techno-literate offenders.

Once the name of a ethical hacker or expert is registered, their assistance would be sought whenever the need arises. Depending on the services they provide, rewards up to a maximum of Rs 50,000 per case is given There are two type of hackers: White Hat Hackers or ethical hackers, who help companies adopt safety measures to prevent hacking. Black Hat Hackers, who tamper or steal information.

Author ! Author !
ANKIT FADIA, when he was a 14 yr-old school boy,student of Delhi public school (R.K Puram Delhi) had written a book called THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO ETHICAL HACKING which was published by Macmillan Publishers.Fadia is the youngest author to be published by Macmillan in their 110-year history. He reportedly wrote the six hundred odd pages in just 15 days and is at present working on two sequels. The idea blossomed following the success of his website called HACKING TRUTHS.Fadia strongly believes that hackers are GOOD GUYS who use their expertise to ferret out evidence of electronic wrongdoing.

Indias first exclusive cyber police station in some cities is all set to hire some ethical hackers to crack cyber crimes involving techno-literate offenders. The department also plans to maintain a register at cyber crime police station, whereby the ethical hackers or experts willing to help the police could register their names.

The technology savvy youngsters

Catch me if you can !!!!

Cyber space is fast emerging as an alternate way of living for the growing generation today. The typical cyber criminal today is the youth, who spends most of his time on the net, who is technology savvy and who either believes that he is invisible to law enforcement and the victim or who likes to play the game of catch me if you can with the law enforcement. There is a need to create better systems and traditions of policing in the cyber space ,for the future. There is a felt need for the agencies to team up with the IT industry and propagate the dos and don'ts of the cyber space usage by school and college youngsters. In todays situation in India, there is a large generation gap between cyberspace users and non-users.

The technology savvy youngsters

Lack of :

The 5P mantra to ONLINE SECURITY

Precaution, Prevention, Protection, Preservation and Perseverance.

"TAKE SECURITY SERIOUSLY"

THE END