Essay on Types of Cybercrimes

Cybercrime

Cybercrime is any form of crime that uses the computer and the internet to carry out an illegal act. Examples of cybercrime include hate crimes through the internet, child pornography, personal hacking information, spamming and phishing. The cybercriminals use the technology of the computers to acquire the secrets in businesses, retrieve personal information and for the harmful or exploitive purpose. The machines are used as illicit means of communication, storage of documents and data. The people known to commit these crimes are commonly known as hackers and offense is also known as computer crime. The common types of the computer crimes involve the crime targeting the networks and devices of the computer or crimes using the interfaces of the machine to improve other types of criminal activities (Rajeyyagari, S. and Alotaibi, A.S., 2018, pp.54-58).

Reasons for Hacking

There are different reasons why people hack information. Some people do it to gain some skills for personal development and a way to pass their leisure time. Others do it for financial gain through fraud, theft, and scams. Hacking is also done by innocent people whereby they download illicit films and music, hacking occurring as an error, social engineering, and software copying. Some people hack to gain information for example surveillance, phone hacking for a lost device and identity theft. The paper will discuss the forms of cybercrime, different kinds of threats posed to the society by private criminals and state-sponsored actors.

Forms of Cybercrime Posed to the Society by Private Criminals

There is a wide range of cybercrimes which makes it hard to fight computer crimes. They include hate crimes through the internet, child pornography, personal hacking information, spamming and phishing. Phishing is a word that refers to the malevolent groups of people or individuals that scam the users. They do these by creating web pages, sending emails or messages that are meant to collect login information, credit card or an online bank of a targeted individual. Their target is to obtain the sensitive personal information such as usernames, credit card details, and passwords making the electronic communication not to be trusted. The phishing emails are received from a well-known company and ask for personal information such as the social security number. Phishing used messages in the past, but currently, email messages are used for the broadcast of information (Balan et al., 2017, pp.64-68).

Hacking is a form of cybercrime which initially referred to as an expert in programming. In our society today, it refers to someone who can access other computers without the authority of their users. Hackers are known as people with good knowledge on computer security and can exploit and find the weakness of a computer system to gain access. Hacking has different impacts on individuals, companies and different social groups. Hacking can give one access to personal email address whereby private information and files maybe leaked out. The information may hold sensitive data of the individual and perhaps used against them thus ruining the privacy of the individual or company. The hackers may also destroy websites and damage the data leaving the website owners with a task of rebuilding their sites again from scratch if they did not have a backup. It would be a risk factor for companies which have consumers’ payments information hosted on their websites (Ngo, F. and Jaishankar, K., 2017, p. 7).

Inciting terrorism and spreading hate is another common type of cybercrime. Hate speech is a speech writing, displays or conduct that attacks a person by race, religion, gender, disability and sexual orientation. A website containing any form of hate speech is regarded to as a hate site. The digital gadgets such as the computers, smartphones and the tablets are usually connected to the internet making it easy to access information. The internet is a platform for interacting and sharing data. Due to the low cost and the high speed of the internet; it results in spreading virtual, violent threats and hate speech faster. Free speech is vital for debates and reflects a healthy society is facilitating difference views of the opinions given. It challenges, pushes individuals from a comfort zone and makes some people uncomfortable. However if not appropriately used, it can spread hate, incite violence and terrorism (Rajeyyagari, S. and Alotaibi, A.S., 2018, p. 56).

Child pornography is a form of cybercrime. It is a method of sexual exploitation of the children usually known as minors who are below eighteen years. The distribution and possession of child pornography are punishable under the federal and state laws. One is termed to commit the crime when he or she downloads a file from the internet containing the illegal images and videos. The photos or videos may be generated from the computer or produced by the electronic media. It is a computer crime because it is transmitted, advertised and sold through the network. Criminals caught in these offenses are usually imprisoned for some years and may also face some other charges.

Child grooming is a cybercrime whereby the minors are befriended with the target of abusing them in sexual ways. Child grooming includes child prostitution, child trafficking and the production of the pornography of children. These sexual grooming is seen and occurs on the internet. The abusers pose as children and arrange to meet them online in person. Facebook is a form of internet used to victimize children. The young children are victims because they are known to seek attention.

Forms of Cybercrime Posed to the Society by State-Sponsored Actors

A state-sponsored actor is an individual who acts on behalf of the government body. They may be from any private institution or an organization that gets supported and sponsored by the government. These individuals are known to violate individual rights and freedoms of the states. State-sponsored actors may be hackers sponsored by the government. The term may seem to include the persons employed by rules, but they are only sponsored, for example, a company may own towns. The state-sponsored actors may violate the essential civil rights of a country. When these state-sponsored actors break the power of the persons in the state or when they deprive rights of the people, they are held reliable (Blinderman, E. and Din, M., 2017, pp. 504).

The cybercrimes committed by these state-sponsored actors includes sharing of servers and other systems of the company to steal some items. They use the methodologies that are used by the typical cybercrime persons and the penetration testers. They phish emails to some targeted individuals to exploit them. Their target is to collect the sensitive personal information such as usernames, credit card details, and passwords making the electronic communication not to be trusted. They later use this personal information to steal from the individual (Balan, S., Otto, J., Minasian, E. and Aryal, A., 2017, p. 66).

The state-sponsored actors commit cyber warfare which is considered to be cheaper, faster and using less energy than the traditional combat (Ngo, F. and Jaishankar, 2017, 1-9). They spread hate by spreading virtual, violent threats and hate speech through the internet. The digital gadgets such as the computers, smartphones and the tablets are usually connected to the internet making it easy to access information. These make it easier to spread hate throughout the state.

The state actors, unlike the other cybercrimes, stick on the use of standard administrators. They move around the state for a long-term, quiet, non-obstructive and persistent way. They hold to their victim networks for months to years before they are discovered. The state-sponsored actors do not make a lot of noise so as not to cause disruption that would trigger suspicion. They remain silent to acquire access to sensitive information, data, and oversight to communications. These attacks are very rewarding because they use low costs, low risk to carry out unlike the other types of crimes.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the cybercriminals use the technology of the computers to acquire the secrets in businesses, retrieve personal information and for the harmful or exploitive purpose. The private criminals and state-sponsored actors pose different kinds of threats to the society. It is meant to improve various criminal activities.

Bibliography

Balan, S., Otto, J., Minasian, E. and Aryal, A., 2017. Data Analysis of Cybercrimes in Businesses. Information Technology and Management Science, 20(1), pp.64-68

Blinderman, E. and Din, M., 2017. Hidden by Sovereign Shadows: Improving the Domestic Framework for Deterring State-Sponsored Cybercrime. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 50(4).

Ngo, F. and Jaishankar, K., 2017. Commemorating a Decade in Existence of the International Journal of Cyber Criminology: A Research Agenda to Advance the Scholarship on Cyber Crime. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 11(1), pp.1-9.

Rajeyyagari, S. and Alotaibi, A.S., 2018. A study on cyber-crimes, threats, security and its emerging trends on latest technologies: influence on the society. International Journal of Engineering & Technology, 7(2.3), pp.54-58.