CYBER Criminals
...e that attaches to a pre-existing program on the victims computer. When each time the infected program is ran, the virus is also ran, where it can do its designed function and reproduce itself. There are 3 main types of virus- the e-mail virus, the worm, and the Trojan horse.-“viruses” E-mail virus-An e-mail virus is simply a virus that moves around in e-mail messages. They usually replicate themselves my automatically mailing itself to everyone in the victims address book. Worms-“A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for a machine with a specific security hole, it copies itself to the new machine using this hole, and begins replicating itself from there as well.”-This is a direct quote from “www.howstuffworks.com/virus.htm” Trojan Horses-“A Trojan horse is a computer program that claims to be one thing (like a computer game) but instead does damage when you run it. Trojan horses have no way of reproducing themselves automatically, and usually reproduce by the victim unknowingly transferring the virus to someone else’s computer via a disk or e-mail message. – w.ww.howstuffworks.com/virus.htm The people that commit these cyber crimes are becoming quite common, and have become known to the public simply as “hackers”. Strangely enough, when the name hacker was first introduced, it had little or nothing to do with computer crime, or computers at all for that matter. The concept entered society in the 1960’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). At M.I.T. students came to be divided into two categories- tools and hackers. A tool then, was one who attended class regularly, studied hard, and strived for academic success. A hacker, on the other hand, frequently skipped classes, slept all day, and spent their nights doing recreational activities rather than studying. –“Harvey” It wasn’t until the late 1980’s that the name hacker was closely associated with computers, and it didn’t become common to the public until probably within the last ten years. Now, it is likely that if you ask anyone in today’s society ages ten through sixty what a hacker is, the answer will probably pertain to computerized crime in some way or another. Although most people know that cyber crime exists, and probably have a pretty good idea of what it is, many are completely “in the dark” about what really is really happening in today’s war against cyber criminality. For instance, in a press conference in Washington D.C. this year, The director of the F.B.I. (Federal Bureau of Investigation) stated that, in a list of the top ten priorities of the F.B.I. cyber crime was number three, coming after 1.Terrorism, and 2.fighting Espionage. -“Berger” Still, many believe that computerized crime is “no big deal” and that these people aren’t really hurting anything, and if they do, our government has it under control. When in fact, according to FBA data, losses from computer crime reach as much as ten million (10,000,000) dollars a year, and the average amount stolen from each crime comes to four hundred thirty thousand (430,000) dollars. –“Golubev” But the main problem with cyber criminals isn’t the losses, it’s that the government agencies that are assigned to track these criminals are usually unable to do their job. In fact, according to estimations, about one in twenty five thousand computer crimes result in the conviction of the computer criminal. In 90% of all of such computer crimes, these government agencies fail to even trace the criminal. –“Golubev” Cyber crime has been in America for many years. The first recorded offense in the United States was in 1966. For the Ukraine however, it wasn’t until June 1998 that the first computer bank robber was convicted. Later that year, October 23, 1988 to be exact, the Ukraine suffered another such bank robbery. Cyber criminals stole 80.4 million VAH (twenty million U.S. Dollars at the time) from accounts of Vinnitsa Regional Management of National Banks of Ukraine. More than 30 people where involved in this crime. § Every year, the department of Computer Crime and Security conducts a survey of primarily large corporations and government agencies. This survey is held to calculate the growth of computerized crime, and to calculate the damages and financial losses that these respondents suffer. In the 2002 Computer Crime and Security survey, as in previous years, the most serious financial loss occurred through theft of propriety information. Also, for the fifth year in a row, more respondents (74%) claimed their Internet connection as the source of attack than their internal systems (33%). The following list from the survey shows the attacks and abuses of the respondents due to cyber criminality. § 40% of all respondents detected outside penetration of their systems. § 40% detected denial of service (DoS) attacks § 78% detected employee abuse of internet access privileges § 85% detected computer viruses § 26 respondents reported $170,827,000 in financial losses due to theft in propriety information. § 25 respondents reported 115,753,000 in losses due to financial fraud § 90% of respondents detected computer security breaches within the last year. § 85% acknowledged financial losses do to hacking § 44% were willing and/or able to quantify their losses-they reported $455,848,000 in losses § only 34% reported the intrusions to law enforcement -“C.S.I” For the past seven years, C.S.I has been conducting their computer crime survey. They have made it apperent to the public that computer crime not only exists, but is a serious threat to today’s businesses and to the government agencies that protect us. The united states has an increasing dependancy on information technology, and cyber crime infringes on the security of this necessity. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the U.S. government is finally cracking down on cyber-terrorism, but even then, only a small fraction of these cyber criminals are caught and prosecuted. Many of these criminals are juveniles that are just having fun with their knowledge of computers, and some probably don’t even realize the damage that they are causing. Others, however, are intentionally hacking into government computers attempting to steal vital information, only to use it against that same government, or sell it to terrorist organizations that will use it against that government, or someone else. In response to the expanding number of criminal attacks that have targeted vital information and economic infrastructure systems, The F.B.I. has es...