Cyber crime : A Virtual shark of the scene

By Asra Mujtaba 11 Minutes Read

Introduction

Crime is an illegal activity for which a person can be punished by law. Physical presence of a criminal and thereby resulting injury is not only a mode of committing a crime. Modes of committing a crime has also reached a new height with the advancement in technology. At present most, important information is stored on the online platforms and mostly all our data are available in the e format. Illegally accessing those documents or using those documents for tarnishing the image of any person is part of cybercrime.

The term cyber-crime has gained recognition and popular use. It has taken some time for the term to get the attention of the people in serious terms. Cybercrime is defined as a criminal offence that involves electronic communications or information systems including any electronic device such as a computer or the internet.

In a cybercrime involvement of computers is essential either it is used as a commission of a crime or it may be a target. Cybercrime is a  threat to people, national security as well as financial health. It is a crime in which computer uses as instruments for the commission of the crime for committing fraud, trafficking in child pornography, intellectual property, violating privacy^[1]. Cybercrime is also  known as e-crime, electronic crimes, hi-tech crime, or computer oriented crime.

It is an act which is performed by a person with high technical skills in the field of information technology. They are called  hackers who illegally browse or steal private information of a company or individual. It is an illegal act that is done by the way of digital form. It includes anything from downloading illegal music to monetary offences such as creating and releasing viruses on other computers or posting confidential business information on the internet.

Hacking:

Hacker is someone who breaks into computers or a computer network, they commit such crime either for financial gains, protesting against any political activity, or just to challenge the limits of his skills and expertise in the field.

Laws on Cyber Crime

Cybercrime is not defined anywhere in the information technology act 2000 or IT amendment act 2008 nor any other act.

Various examples of cybercrime like child pornography, copyright violation, cracking, cyber terrorism, cyberbullying, cybersquatting, creating malware, denial of service attack, doxing, harvesting, fraud, phishing, scam, software piracy, unauthorized access, spoofing, spamming, slander, etc.

Though the internet is one of the greatest creations that connects millions of people all over the world. But besides its advantages, it also has various disadvantages such as bullying, trolls, stalkers and crime, pornographic and violent images, addiction, time-wasting, causing distractions, never being able to disconnect from work, identity theft, hacking viruses, cheating, depression loneliness and social isolation, health issues, and obesity.

Cybercrime is of various types some of them are as follows^[2].

1. Hacking: – It is an act that is committed by a person to access the other personal computer without that person’s permission. They are the person who has advanced knowledge and experience in the field of computers and they misuse this knowledge for various reasons. They are highly skilled persons who have expert skills in various types of softwares as well as languages and they employ various modes in hacking to get illegal advantages for their benefits. 

2. Theft of FTP password: – various people are very weak in remembering their password so that they leave their website login information on their poorly protected personal computer and  allow Hackers  to take advantage. They search the victim’s system to get FTP login details and relay these on their own computer then login into his computer and start accessing the website by themselves and make suitable modifications.

3. Virus dissemination: – A virus is  attached with the  system or files and it starts  tending to circulate to other computers on the network. It affects data stored on such devices by modification or deleting data. It is also a kind of cybercrime crime that is used by the offender to get the advantages against the owners.

4. Phishing:- various kinds of information are confidential those belong to such as credit card number, atm pin, signatures, username, and password combos by masquerading as a legitimate enterprise, this phishing technique is used to extract this confidential information.

5. Email bombing and spanning: – To utilise a user email account or crash email  server, email bombing techniques are used. In this a substantial amount of abuser emails are sent from the user mail account with intention to cause damage to the user reputation. The message which is sent by an unauthorised person is meaningless and excessively long to consume network resources.

6. Web jacking: – The word web jacking is derived from hijacking. In this type of cybercrime hacker takes the control of a website fraudulently or by illegal means . In it the offender either changes the contents of the user site or redirects to another fake similar-looking Page controlled by the offender to confuse the mind of the other person or  to cause damage to the reputation of the original person.

7. Cyber staking:- cyber staking is also a very popular form of cybercrime. Staking means  to follow someone. In cyber staking offender follows or pursues the victim by online means. It is different from offline on this internet or any other electronic means is used. They harass victims either by email, chat rooms, web sites, open publishing websites. There are two ways of cyber staking i.e, internet stalking and computer stalking.

8. Data diddling:- it is an alteration of data by an unauthorized person either before entry into a computer or after that and then changing it back after processing is done in this type of hacking original data is modified by the offender to the extent that they want and very difficult to task the original one.  The offender uses various techniques to perform data diddling such as changing data either by a person who is entering it, installs virus which automatically changes data, programmer of the database or application, any other activities involved in the process of creating, recording, encoding, examining, checking and transmitting data.

Preventive measures to the Crime

As we all know that cybercrime is getting popular all over the world and the number of cases increase day by day so we need to find out some ways of its prevention and protection some of them are as follows.^[3]

1. Hype up your security consciousness^[4]

2. Protect your computer

3. Installed anti-virus protection

4. Install firewalls

5. Upgrade your system

6. Don’t leave account login

7. Be prepared for the invasion

8. Backup your information regular

9. Hire a security expert

10.  Use strong passwords^[5]

11. Manage your social media setting

12. Keep up to date on major security breaches

Information Technology Act,2000 deals with the Cyber crimes ranging from hacking to cyber terrorism. In this Act, only Cyber Terrorism is punishable with life imprisonment, and rest all of them are punishable with imprisonment of three years while some others are punishable with imprisonment for seven years. But if there is a mere hacking it shall not involve imprisonment unless it includes phishing, money laundering, email frauds, etc.   In Indian law, no provision will imprison a person for life for a crime of hacking. India needs to amend its cyber laws more in a strict manner, because of India’s cyber laws there is a growth of scammers, phishing, money laundering, etc. As everyone is aware that India does not have strict laws. There should be stringent laws and their implementation for reducing these types of crimes.

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Asra Mujtaba