What is Cybercrime and How to Deter It

What is Cybercrime?
Definition of Cybercrime
Cybercrime is any criminal activity that is conducted using computers or the Internet. As today’s digital natives have the most experience with computers, cybercriminals tend to be of the Millennial generation—i.e., born after 1980. They are young, digitally sophisticated, and able to operate with a degree of professionalism and discipline that allows them to hide their crimes beneath legitimate-looking facades. Spearphishing is one example of a type of cybercrime used by professional criminals to lure victims into traps or sites that have the appearance of legitimacy.
Cybercrime is committed by people who know computer code, understand computer systems and networks, know how to navigate databases, access data storage, get past firewalls, exploit cloud computing services, control the Internet of Things and more. They
How Cybercrime Has Evolved over Time
Computers and the rise of the Internet ushered in the era of cybercrime. IBM’s first computer arrived in the 1950s, but it was an enormous machine—and cybercrime did not really become a possibility until the personal computer began to hit the market in the 1970s (Computer Hope, 2019). As businesses and organizations began to more operations online, individuals began to see an opportunity to exploit weak supports to gain access over company data, individual personal information, or access to financial accounts. Cybercrime has grown into a highly sophisticate and complex industry that is constantly pushing the boundaries and requiring security experts to play catch-up all the while.
Cybercrime falls under the category of white collar crime. Cybercrime in the early days focused on exploiting punch cards and machines, but gradually as the technology developed cybercrime began to focus on committing fraud in a variety of forms, identity theft, and hacking (Schjølberg, 2017). Today, cybercriminals can take control of radar systems, hijack ships, and steal data. Common cyber crime often takes the form of enterprise crime, in which illegal activities are united under a legitimate business front, allowing the crime to have a corporate status even though it is engaged in criminal activity. Rather than trying to get around regulations and rules, the criminal embraces them and uses the veneer of legitimacy to hide behind. Enterprise crime is also sometimes known as organized crime. The Mafia is such an organization and it may have a legitimate business front but behind the scenes it is moving drugs or guns, and during the days of Prohibition it was moving alcohol. Enterprise crime can hide behind restaurants, charitable organizations, art galleries and so on. One of the most common forms of enterprise crime, however, is cybercrime.
The specific facets of the modern technology/computer revolution which make cybercrime possible include the ability to hide one’s digital footprints and the relatively new field of digital forensics (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor & Tafoya, 2019).).
Computers allow for a virtual anonymity to be obtained and allow criminals to commit crimes from virtually anywhere in the world thanks to the Internet. They do not even have to be in the same country but can send viruses or ransomware to other networks and hold them hostage. Cybercrime does not have to be of a physical nature; it can be all digitally related. So instead of robbing a bank of its physical cash, hackers can hack into systems and take digital currency.
Because so much of the world has become digitalized, cybercriminals now have to learn how to hack systems and they may not be as good at hiding their digital footprints as they believe. So they can leave tracks behind that can be found. They may also immediately trigger red flags in systems that have been designed to identify criminal activity or suspicious behavior. Many organizations are monitoring what their employees are doing on their networks so that they can put a stop to white collar crime, such as money laundering or extortion or theft.
Thus, on the one hand technology makes it easier for cybercrime to occur these days, but on the other hand it also makes it harder for criminals to get away with it. Criminals have to be very tech savvy and must know the latest technology in order to get away with white collar crime. Governments and businesses are now outsourcing security to third parties who specialize in providing digital security, and so white collar criminals must either be ahead of the game or they will be identified.
Categories and Classifications of Cybercrime
There are four main types of cybercrime: 1) internal computer crimes, 2) telecommunications crimes, 3) embezzlement via computer manipulation, and 4) theft. Internal computer crimes consist of the use of Trojan horses, trap doors, worms, viruses, malware, ransomware, phishing or any other type off mechanism used to gain control over a computer. Telecommunications crimes can include hacking or phreaking, but it can also include cyber stalking, which involves harassing individuals online (usually social media), money laundering, or identity theft.
Different Types of Cybercrime
Social engineering forms of cybercrime are common. These including emails that contain links to malware or other forms of harm. Spearphishing is one of the most common forms and is essentially any type of online scam in which the suspect is duped into wiring money to a fraudulent account based on a fictitious narrative. The romance scam, employment opportunity scams, fraudulent online vehicle scams, rental scams, and lottery scams are all ways that spearphishers lure victims. Cyber attacks, such as denial of service attacks to take down a website or eavesdropping are other forms (Taylor et al., 2019).
Cybercrime can include human and sex trafficking, privacy violations (such as theft of personal health information), selling contraband items such as drugs or weapons online, crypto mining using others’ energy resources or personal computers, IP theft, ransomware and malware (Crane, 2019).
Effects of Social Media on Cybercrime
Social Media Crimes
Social media crimes include cyberstalking, hate crime posts, threats, harassment, and bullying. Because so much of today’s activities are done online, social media is where everything takes place. Individuals present themselves, their profiles, their likes and dislikes, their pictures and their thoughts online for others to see. Most people respond positively to these actions as they would in the real world—but some people use social media to harass others, which is a crime if it is persistent and deemed excessive or harmful.
Creating fake accounts or impersonating people on social media with the intent of defrauding others is also form of fraud that can be prosecuted as cyber crime. Using accounts to buy illegal goods or products is another type of crime that occur under this category along with livestreaming killings, murders, rapes, suicides or other illegal activities, as happens on Facebook Live and other streaming platforms from time to time. People can also use social media to discern when others are on vacation from their homes and use the opportunity to conduct vacation robberies (Schjølberg, 2017; Taylor et al., 2019).
Effects of Cybercrime
The effects of cybercrime can be quantified in dollar costs. For instance, as Crane (2019) notes, “the U.S. leads the way with more than $27 million in annual costs relating to cybercrime.” Around the world, the cybercrime industry generated for itself $1.5 trillion, so it is a booming industry for criminals (Crane, 2019). Cybercrime can also bring an entire nation to its knees—for instance, if there is a cyber assault on a nation’s energy infrastructure.
The effect of cybercrime can also be seen in the fact that 85% of businesses are under attack every year, whether from phishing scams or from social engineering (Crane, 2019). This means that in order to operate as a company in today’s digital environment businesses have to have serious cyber security to protect their own data, clients’ data, networks, databases and so on. This puts an additional strain and cost on companies that is typically outsourced to third party vendors who specialize in security. These costs add up, however, and include testing, maintenance, development, and more—all of which begins to eat into the bottom line. The inevitable impact is that cybercrime becomes a drain on the global economy as more and more money is invested not in research and development of innovative new products but in defense systems that keep hackers and other cybercriminals at bay.
Why Cybersecurity is Important
The global digital population consists of 4.5 billion Internet users around the world (Statista, 2020). Cybersecurity is important because without it people, countries and companies are vulnerable to attack. Cybersecurity is an absolute most, however, for countries—all of which in the developed world rely upon cyber systems for energy. One of the challenges for the US for example is that 90% of the energy infrastructure is in private hands: it is not nationalized or held by the U.S. government. This means cybersecurity for energy is not something the government can readily oversee—even though the entire nation relies on energy and the economy would crash and the social infrastructure would be brought down if a cyber attack on the nation’s energy infrastructure took place by cybercriminals or enemies abroad.
The private sector controls the nation’s energy infrastructure, which means there has to be a great deal of integration and collaboration between the federal government and the private sector in securing the energy infrastructure. This type of collaboration is not always easy, particularly when there is an administration in office that is at odds with the private energy sector. The private energy industry, for instance, has been at odds with progressive politicians for years, and the thought of collaboration and integration at this point is unlikely to really reap benefits. So while the main transnational threat may be a lack of cyber security, the reality of the situation is that it is the country’s own domestic policies and politics that ultimately make the energy sector and infrastructure vulnerable to a cyber attack. There has to be more unification in terms of ideals, direction, and understanding between the energy industry and the federal government, no matter what the administration is.
Work is in progress to make sure that the private industry understands the stakes and what cyber security risks exist: the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response was established to work with this industry to make sure attacks of this nature do not succeed. With so many different stakeholders working together to raise knowledge and create policies and protocols for implementation, the desired outcome may be achieved.
Why are Cybercrimes Hard to Prosecute?
Cybercrimes are difficult to prosecute because it is often hard to trace the digital footprints of the perpetrators. Cyber forensics is a relatively new field in the forensics department, but it is a growing and necessary one. Proving that a particular person was involved in a cybercrime involves obtaining detailed information from the suspect’s computer or from the victim’s computer or network. Yet, attackers can often mask their footprints and make it appear as though the crime was conducted by another person or country.
State, Federal and International Laws Related to Cybercrime
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the main law that allows for the prosecution of cybercrime. It prohibits unauthorized access to a computer or security information. The Electronic Communications Protection Act is another federal law that along with the Stored Communications Act makes it a criminal offense to access information with authorization. Hacking, phishing and denial of service attacks are all prosecuted under these laws. Most states have taken steps to pass cybercrime bills and the majority of them already have laws on the books regarding cybercrime. International laws regarding human rights typically are applied in cybercrime cases (Taylor et al., 2019).
How to Deter and Prevent Cybercrime
One of the best ways to prevent cybercrime is to educate the end user. The vast majority of cybercrimes come from phishing scams and social engineering, both of which prey on the end user. End users should know better than to click on suspicious links or give away passwords—but they do not. This is partly a training problem and partly a human nature problem. Most workers in firms do not spend their time thinking that there are hackers looking to find ways to illegally access the company’s information or networks—but they need to do so and companies need to pay more attention to this matter because the end user is the most vulnerable part of a security system for an organization. For that reason, organizations need to invest in training so that they can reduce the risk of having their networks penetrated via an end user failing to exercise caution.
Collaboration is also required between governments and private organizations to make sure that penetration is not possible in industries that the nation depends upon. Cybercrime can be small and it can be quite large—such as an attack on the nation’s infrastructure. At that point it is verging on cyber terrorism, which is why governments need to issue regulations regarding how much security organizations need, especially when so much of the nation’s infrastructure is dependent upon private organizations maintaining it.References
Computer Hope. (2019). When was the first computer invented?Retrieved from https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm
Crane, C. (2019). 33 alarming cybercrime statistics you should know in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/33-alarming-cybercrime-statistics-you-should-know/
Schjølberg, Stein. (2017). The History of Cybercrime (1976-2016). Books on Demand.
Statista. (2020). Global digital population. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., Liederbach, J., Saylor, M. R., & Tafoya, W. L. (2019). Cyber crime and cyber terrorism. NY, NY: Pearson.