Cyber Crime

The criminal action or crime through the computer or computer network harms an organization like a government, a private, or even an individual. Cybercrimes can be committed by an individual or a group. A breach of confidential information, espionage, financial loss, System failure, or any other method via the internet that affects the reputation of an organization or an individual is a major risk associated with cybercrimes.

Cybercrime is not accidental but intentional to harm organizations or an individuals’ reputation, loss, physical or mental harm through any electronic system by concealing the identity of the cybercriminals.

The growing usage of modern technology which mostly depends on a computer to facilitate user convenience comes with various new risks of emerging cybercrimes.

Overview

Definition

Cybercrime can be defined as an act of committing a crime through a computer or computer network against organizations like government or private and even on any individual.

Cybercriminals

Adepts and experts in advanced technology to hack or attack the computer are known as CyberCriminals.

Cyber crimes provide illegal products or services on the dark web. All hackers are not unethical but help to unwrap the vulnerabilities and legally report known as white hat hackers. Some groups or individuals with malicious work to cause harm are called black hat hackers. Another hacker may be a novice. Various types of cybercriminals are Black hat hackers, cyber stalkers, cyber terrorists, or Scammers.

Cybercrime

Cybercrime can be,

Cybercrime can be through the computers like malware or viruses.

Cybercrime can be using the victim’s computer to do other criminal activity.

CyberCrime categorization

Cybercrime can be classified as follows −

• Organization − The attacks such as malware, viruses, or Denial of service to the website or system of an organization by cybercriminals.

• Individual − This attack is mainly focusing on individual information or computer including stalking, spamming, phishing, etc.

• Society − This can be cyber terrorism or such a dangerous form to society.

• Property − The monetary assets such as Credit cards, bank details, online transactions, funds, or personal property information, etc are included in such cybercrimes.

Different types of Cybercrime

Phishing

A fraud message or email send to retrieve vital information about the user. By clicking on the message or link by the victim, the cybercriminals get the sensitive information of the victim. Also downloading software will exploit the target system. Nowadays phishing emails are many which cannot be distinguished from legitimate emails.

Ransomware

A popular attack is when a hacker locks the user's access and asks to pay ransom in bitcoins to regain access to the computer. Ransomware is malware that is extortion using cyberspace.

Eg:- Wannacry

Malware

A vast range of cyberattacks using Viruses, worms, or Trojans. Malware just manipulates the code of the computer to destroy or harm the system.

Trojans is the malware that act as legitimate software and provide a backdoor to hackers to attack the system or implement virus in the system. Eg: Zeus

The virus is malware that deletes files uncontrollably and damages the core functionality of the system. Eg: Melissa

Worms is the malware in which copies of self spread throughout the system without any interruption and exploiting the vulnerability of security. Eg: Ryuk, Mydoom

Distributed Denial of service attack

An attacker floods with data traffic to overload and disrupts the network of the target system. A multiple host machine using more than one IP address attacked the target system denying the regular services.

Man in the middle attack

In this attack, the attacker steals the credential of the victim and intercepts between two communications.

In the above popular cybercrimes are discussed. The other various types are Cyberbullying, Software piracy, Online Fraud, spoofing, etc.

Tools to detect Cybercrime

There are many forensic methodologies and tools to analyze and prevent cybercrime. Kali Linux is software using digital forensics and testing the penetration of hackers. It especially works for cyber forensics and its open-source software.

Wireshark is used to investigate the network and capture the packets. It is an analyzer in network protocol

Another forensic tool is EnCase for examining the removable disk, hard disk, and image of the data. There are many tools to investigate cybercrimes.

Cybercrime precautions or preventions

The major reason for cyber crime is the loophole in the computers and the preventive measures as follows −

• Use up-to-date software or applications

• Secure the system with antivirus and firewall

• Don’t reveal personal details to public websites or strange places.

• Avoid sending a photograph to an unknown which can be misused.

• Don’t tell the credit/debit card password, OTP, bank customer id, or such vital information to anyone.

• Prevent downloading files from Untrusted websites.

• Back up the data.

• Use VPN(a virtual private network)

• Authenticate passwords with strong methods such as using symbols, numbers, etc.

• Educate about the risk associated with cyber children and also monitor their activity.

Conclusion

Cyber crimes are increasing in this digital age and there is a need to pay attention to security. A strong system can be implemented through proper security and assessment while using the computer. A small negligence can pay high damage to the organization Hence, security is much needed for any electronic device.