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defines cyber crime as crime committed over the Internet.
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 defines cyber crime as any crime that is committed by means of

special knowledge or expert use of computer technology.

So what exactly is Cyber Crime?

Cyber crime could reasonably include a wide variety of criminal offences and activities.
The Internet ± or Cyber Space as it s sometimes called, is a borderless environment unlike a
brick and mortar world. Even though it is indispensable as a knowledge bank, it is an ideal tool
for someone with a criminal bent of mind, who can use this environment to his/ her maximum
advantage.
It is not a surprise that Cyber Crimes like money cyber stalking, denial of service, e-mail abuse,
chat abuse and other crimes are on the rise. Cyber Terrorist and cyber mafia are emerging with
great force, whose activities are going to threaten the sovereignty of nations and world order.

Cybercrime is nothing new to us. The first recorded cybercrime took place in the year 1820!
That is not surprising considering the fact that the abacus, which is thought to be the earliest
form of a computer, has been around since 3500 B.C. in India, Japan and China. The era of
modern computers, however, began with the analytical engine of Charles Babbage. In 1820,
Joseph-Marie Jacquard, a textile manufacturer in France, produced the loom. This device
allowed the repetition of a series of steps in the weaving of special fabrics. This resulted in a fear
amongst Jacquard's employees that their traditional employment and livelihood were being
threatened. They committed acts of sabotage to discourage Jacquard from further use of the new
technology. This is the first recorded cybercrime.

Cybercrimes can be basically divided into 3 major categories:

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We will deal with each one as follows:

(i) 
 
  
 
 

 include various crimes like transmission
of child-pornography, harassment of any one with the use of a computer such as e-
mail. The trafficking, distribution, posting, and dissemination of obscene material
including pornography and indecent exposure, constitutes one of the most important
Cybercrimes known today. The potential harm of such a crime to humanity can
hardly be amplified. This is one Cybercrime which threatens to undermine the growth
of the younger generation as also leave irreparable scars and injury on the younger
generation, if not controlled.
In a recent case, a minor girl in Ahmedabad was lured to a private place through
cyber chat by a man, who, along with his friends, attempted to gang rape her. As
some passers-by heard her cry, she was rescued.
Cyber harassment as a crime also brings us to another related area of violation of
privacy of citizens. Violation of privacy of online citizens is a Cybercrime of a grave
nature. No one likes any other person invading the invaluable and extremely touchy
area of his or her own privacy which the medium of internet grants to the citizen.
(ii) The second category of Cyber-crimes is that  
 
 
   

. These crimes include computer vandalism (destruction of others' property),
transmission of harmful programmes.
A Mumbai-based upstart engineering company lost a say and much money in the
business when the rival company, an industry major, stole the technical database from
their computers with the help of a corporate cyber spy.
 Another example wherein the damage was not done to a person but to the masses is
the case of 
 
   . a
 
    first appeared on the internet in
March of 1999. It spread rapidly throughout computer systems in the United States
and Europe. It is estimated that the virus caused 80 million dollars in damages to
computers worldwide.
In the United States alone, the virus made its way through 1.2 million computers in
one-fifth of the country's largest businesses. David Smith pleaded guilty on Dec. 9,
1999 to state and federal charges associated with his creation of the Melissa virus.
There are numerous examples of such computer viruses few of them being "
 
and "love bug".
(iii) The third category of Cyber-crimes relate to Cybercrimes against å



.
Cyber terrorism is one distinct kind of crime in this category. The growth of internet
has shown that the medium of Cyberspace is being used by individuals and groups
to threaten the international governments as also to terrorise the citizens of a
country. This crime manifests itself into terrorism when an individual "cracks" into a
government or military maintained website.
Mr. M. K. Narayanan,  

  ! 
, told The Times in a rare
interview, that his office and other government departments were targeted on
December 15 the same date that Google reported sophisticated cyber-attacks from
China. A µTrojan¶ virus was embedded in an e-mail PDF attachment, which allows a
hacker to access a computer remotely and download or delete files. The virus was
detected and officials were told not to log on until it was eliminated. This was not the
first instance of an attempt to hack into India¶s computers. Even though it is difficult
to find the exact source but people seem to be fairly sure it was the Chinese. The
attack seems well founded. India was co-operating with America and Britain to
bolster its cyber defenses. China has denied any role in the hacking attacks, which
began on December 15 and also targeted US Defense contractors and finance and
technology companies, including Google.
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What is denial of service?
This is an act by a criminal, who floods the bandwidth of the victim¶s network or fills his e-mail
box with spam mail depriving him of the services he is entitled to access or provide.
This act is committed by a technique called spoofing and buffer overflow. The criminal spoofs
the IP address and flood the network of the victim with repeated requests. Since the IP address is
fake, the victim machine keeps waiting for response from the criminal¶s machine for each
request. This consumes the bandwidth of the network which then fails to serve the legitimate
requests and ultimately breaks down. Example: School/College Admission, IRCTC server
breakdowns due to overload.
The diagram below will give you an idea of how the attack happens
X


Xacking in simple terms means illegal intrusion into a computer system without the permission
of the computer owner/user.
Purposes of hacking
? Greed
? Power
? Publicity
? Revenge
? Adventure
? Desire to access forbidden information
? Destructive mindset
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The original meaning of the word "hack" was born at MIT, and originally meant an elegant,
witty or inspired way of doing almost anything. Now the meaning has changed to become
something associated with the breaking into or harming of any kind of computer or
telecommunications system. Purists claim that those who break into computer systems should be
properly called "crackers" and those targeting phones should be known as "phreaks".
Prominent websites hacked

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The net is a boon for people to conduct business effectively, very quickly. It saves businesses a
lot of time, money and resources. Unfortunately, the net is also an open invitation to scamsters
and fraudsters and online frauds are becoming increasingly rampant.
Spoof websites and email security alerts
Fraudsters create authentic looking websites that are actually nothing but a spoof. The purpose of
these websites is to make the user enter personal information. This information is then used to
access business and bank accounts. Fraudsters are increasingly turning to email to generate
traffic to these websites.
A lot of customers of financial institutions recently received such emails. Such emails usually
contain a link to a spoof website and mislead users to enter User ids and passwords on the
pretence that security details can be updated, or passwords changed.
If you ever get an email containing an embedded link, and a request for you to enter secret
details, treat it as suspicious. Do not input any sensitive information that might help provide
access to your accounts, even if the page appears legitimate. No reputable company ever sends
emails of this type.
A



Child Pornography
Child pornography is a very unfortunate reality of the Internet. The Internet is being highly used
by its abusers to reach and abuse children sexually, worldwide.
The Internet is very fast becoming a household commodity in India. Its explosion has made the
children a viable victim to the cyber crime. As more homes have access to Internet, more
children would be using the Internet and more are the chances of falling victim to the aggression
of pedophiles.
What is Child Pornography?
³Child pornography´ means any visual depiction, including
1. any photograph
2. film, video, picture, or
3. computer or computer-generated image or picture, of sexually explicit conduct, where the
production of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually
explicit conduct
Who are Pedophiles?
Pedophiles are those persons who physically or psychologically coerce minors to engage in
sexual activities, which the minors would not consciously consent to.

In physical world, parents know the face of dangers and they know how to avoid and face the
problems by following simple rules and accordingly they advice their children to keep away
from dangerous things and ways. But in case of cyber world, most of the parents do not
themselves know about the basics of the Internet and dangers posed by various services offered
over the Internet. Xence the children are left unprotected in the cyber world. Pedophiles take
advantage of this situation and lure the children, who are not advised by their parents or by their
teachers about what is wrong and what is right for them while browsing the Internet.

Cyber pornography is also a threat to the female citizens. This would include pornographic
websites; pornographic magazines produced using computers (to publish and print the material)
and the Internet (to download and transmit pornographic pictures, photos, writings etc.)
Recent Indian incidents revolving around cyber pornography include the Air Force Balbharati
School case. A student of the Air Force Balbharati School, Delhi, was teased by all his
classmates for having a pockmarked face. Tired of the cruel jokes, he decided to get back at his
tormentors. Xe scanned photographs of his classmates and teachers, morphed them with nude
photographs and put them up on a website that he uploaded on to a free web hosting service. It
was only after the father of one of the class girls featured on the website objected and lodged a
complaint with the police that any action was taken.
In another incident, in Mumbai a Swiss couple would gather slum children and then would force
them to appear for obscene photographs. They would then upload these photographs to websites
specially designed for paedophiles. The Mumbai police arrested the couple for pornography.

 
(Illegal intrusion, posing as a genuine user)
? Spoofing means a hacker logs-in to a computer illegally using a different identity than his
own.
? Xe is able to do this by having previously obtained actual password.
? Xe creates a new identity by fooling the computer into thinking he is the genuine system
operator.
? Xacker then takes control of the system.
A review in the CyberlawTimes.com shows that India has crossed the danger mark in cybercrime
targeting women and children. Statistics show, and law enforcers confirm, that the maximum
number of cybercrimes related to obscenity occurred in Mumbai last year. There were at least 40
cases in 2006 (of which only ten were registered), a steep rise from only five cases in 2005.Delhi
was close behind, with 30 obscenity-related cases (nine registered), but topped in cases of
hacking. Bangalore, Chennai, Xyderabad and Pune reported only a handful of obscene crimes
but saw a greater incidence of hacking.



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The Anna Kournikova (or VBS.SST@mm) worm, appearing in February 2001, didn't
cause data loss, although in the process of boosting the profile of its namesake, the
Russian tennis player, it did cause embarrassment and disruption for many personal and
business users. The worm showed up in Microsoft Outlook users' e-mail in-boxes with an
attachment (supposedly a picture of Kournikova). The attachment proved hard to resist.
The result? Clicking the bogus attachment sent copies of the worm via e-mail to all
addresses found in the victim's Outlook address book. Kournikova also brought about a
number of copycat variants.
Most worm creators have never been identified, but a 21-year-old Dutchman, Jan de Wit,
admitted to unleashing this worm. The admitted virus writer is appealing a 150-hour
community service sentence handed down in September 2001 by a judge in the
Netherlands.
2. +
-
Klez worm, which blends different virus traits, was first detected in October 2001. Klez
distributes itself like a virus, but sometimes acts like a worm, other times like a Trojan
horse. Klez isn't as destructive as other worms, but it is widespread, hard to exterminate--
and still active. In fact, so far, no other virus has stayed in circulation quite like Klez. It
spreads via open networks and e-mail-regardless of the e-mail program you use. Klez
sometimes masquerades as a worm-removal tool! It may corrupt files and disable anti-
virus products. It steals data from a victim's e-mail address book, mixing and matching
new senders and recipients for a new round of infection.