1.

Introduction In Malaysia the crimes committed against computers or against information on

computers are beginning to grow. They grow as fast as the acceptance of the technologies that we imported to our community and culture. For instances, in the late 90s we only knew the basic of the internet but now, we could do almost everything with our own handset. Due to these advancements we have to be more careful in every step that we take so we would not be the victim. We should be wise in selecting the technologies that we are going to use in our everyday life.

1.1

Definitions There are various definitions that been highlighted in conjunction to educate the

community to make a clear picture for them about the cyber crimes. The Oxford Reference Online defines cybercrime as crime committed over the internet. The Encyclopaedia Britannica also has defined computer crime as any crime that is committed by means of special knowledge or expert use of computer technology. There are two types of definitions that have been highlighted from the Wikipedia such as; the computer crime or cybercrimes refer to any crime that involves a computer and a network and the computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. According to Duggal Pawan, in his journal entitled Cybercrime, he has defined the cybercrime as Any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrumentality, target or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime. Some writers are also of the opinion that computer crime refers to computer-related activities which are either criminal in the legal sense of the word or just antisocial behaviour where there is no breach of the law.

2.0

CONTENT 2.1 CLASSIFICATION OF CYBER CRIMES

There are various cases and types of cyber crimes. In order to highlight them clear, they can be classified under 4 major categories. They are: 2.1.1 2.1.2 2.1.3 2.1.4 Cyber crime against Individual Cyber crime against Property Cyber crime against Organization Cyber crime against Society

2.1.1 Cyber crime against Individual There are four types of cyber criminals that consist under this category. Such acts are email spoofing, spamming, cyber defamation and harassment and cyber stalking. 2.1.1.1 E mail Spoofing E mail spoofing occurs when e mails were sent which misrepresents its origin. It shows its origin to be different from which actually it originates. According to Mr Parthasarathi Pati in his journal of Cyber Crime, one of the well known e mail spoofing was sent by the name of Mr. Na. Vijayashankar that contained virus. 2.1.1.2 Spamming Spamming also related to the e mails. It was sent by irresponsible person or organisation for the purpose of promoting their products or for other reasons. They sent their e mails to other peoples accounts in multiple copies. 2.1.1.3 Cyber Defamation Cyber defamation is an act whereby e mails were sent for the intention to expose a person to be hatred, contempt or ridicule. It is not different from conventional defamation except it uses virtual medium to expose the matter.

2.1.1.4 Harassment and Cyber stalking Harassment and cyber stalking are quite similar. They are the act of following someones movements through the internet by posting messages, entering the chat rooms that frequently visited by the victims and constantly bombarding the victims with emails.

2.1.2

Cyber crime against Property

2.1.2.1 Fraud Online fraud is one of the most challenging phenomenons. Most people were trapped in this act. For example, the irresponsible person altered, destroyed or stealing output to conceal unauthorized transactions such as credit card, online banking, ATM machine transactions and others. The purpose is to get information thus to cheat and theft the money from the altered transaction. 2.1.2.2 Intellectual Property Crimes The intellectual property crimes are the most highly rated crimes in this field. It consists of illegal copying of programs, distribution of copies of software, copyright infringement, trademarks violations and theft or computer source code.

2.1.3

Cyber crime against Organization

2.1.3.1 Unauthorized accessing of computer Unauthorized accessing of computer occurs when a person accessing a computer or a network without the consent or permission of the owner. There are two types of unauthorized accessing such as unauthorized changing of data and copies or read confidential information or data without deleting them. These events always occur in a successful organization in order to fail their management. 2.1.3.2 Virus attack Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file. They circulate themselves to other files and other computers in a similar network. Viruses affected computer data by altering or deleting them.

2.1.3.3 Email Bombing This kind of activity refers to sending large numbers of mail to the victim, which may be a company or mail servers that resulted into ultimate crashing. 2.1.3.4 Salami Attack The Salami attack is normally prevalent in the financial institutions or for the purpose of committing financial crimes. An important feature of this type of offence is that the alteration is small and we cannot notice the item. For example, the clerk of a bank or the hacker alter the minimum amount (e.g: 10 cents) of each transaction. If the act occurs for 1000 transaction, the clerk or the hacker will gained large amount of money. 2.1.3.5 Logic Bomb The logic bomb designated for dependent programme and it has its own purposed. When certain purposed time occurs, the logic bomb will released a virus and crashes the computer that resulted harmful possibilities. 2.1.3.6 Trojan Horse Trojan horse is an unauthorised programme which acted, take over and representing itself as an authorised programme. It passively acted towards other programme. 2.1.3.7 Data Diddling Data diddling attacks during the computer processing. It alters raw data during the processing and changes after the processing session complete.

2.1.4

Cyber crimes against Society

2.1.4.1 Forgery Hackers use high technology to forge currency notes thus gain high income through the act. 2.1.4.2 Cyber Terrorism According to Parker (1983) cyber terrorism can be defined as an act of terrorism committed through the use of cyber space or computer resources. A person who has intention to broaden his or her political influences or objectives by launching computer based attack against computers, network and the information stored on them. 2.1.4.3 Web Jacking The hackers take control of another web site. They change the information of the website. 2.1.4.4 Child pornography

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COMPARISON OF CYBER CRIMES IN MALAYSIA AND USA 2.2.1 CYBER CRIMES IN MALAYSIA

In Malaysia, cyber crimes have been categorized under the white collar crime (Supt. Lim Hong Shuan, 2005). Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) of Royal Malaysian Police is the unit that responsible to take care of the cyber criminal cases. The offences investigated by the unit that related with cyber crimes are as follows: 2.2.1.2 Offences under the Penal Code such as criminal breach of trust, criminal misappropriation of property, cheating and forgery (include ATM/credit card fraud), false accounting, counterfeiting currency and criminal defamation.

2.2.1.3 Cyber crime under the Computer Crime Act 1997 such as hacking, e mail fraud, Internet fraud, ATM/credit card fraud.

2.2.1.4 Product piracy under the Copyright Act 1997 and Optical Disc Act 2001 such as pirated VCD/DVD and computer software. (White collar crime in Malaysia, Supt. Lim Hong Shuan)

Whereas, in USA the department that is responsible with cyber crimes cases is The Defense Department of Cyber Crime Center known as DC3. This department is under The US Department of Defence (DoD). Since USA is the fast moving country and it has many experiences in this field compared to Malaysia, thus we need to make comparisons of cyber crimes between these two countries. In order to make comparisons between these two countries, we need to compare them within the classification of cyber crimes.

2.2.1.5

Cyber crime against Individual

In USA, there are various cases that involved cyber crime against society. One of them is cyber defamation. The USA Today online newspaper has reported on October 2006, that jury has awarded $11.3 million over defamatory internet posts. A Florida woman has won a defamation lawsuit against a Louisiana woman who posted messages on the Internet accusing her of being a "crook," a "con artist" and a "fraud." The dispute between the two women arose after Bock asked Scheff for help in withdrawing Bock's twin sons from a boarding school in Costa Rica. Bock had disagreed with her ex-husband over how to deal with the boys' behavior problems. Against Bock's wishes, he had sent the boys to the boarding school. Scheff, who operates a referral service called Parents Universal Resource Experts, says she referred Bock to a consultant who helped Bock retrieve her sons. Afterward, Bock became critical of Scheff and posted negative messages about her on the Internet site Fornits.com, where parents with children in boarding schools for troubled teens confer with one another. Cyber defamatory cases in Malaysia differ from USA as it always occurs among well known person such as political persons and artists. The purpose is to tarnish the reputation of the well known person. One of the famous cyber defamatory cases is Siti Nurhaliza v. Ahmad Shaharil (college lecturer) in 2006. The e-mail from an anonymous sender called Asmah & The Gang, among others contained defamatory words aimed at tarnishing Siti Nurhalizas career and family. Ahmad Shaharil has alleged to have sent e-mails containing defamatory words against Siti Nurhaliza which he received from Sharifah Aini to New Straits Times (NST) journalist Faridul Anwar Farinordin, at about 5.25 pm on Aug 24 2006. Ahmad Shaharil is charged under Section 500 of the Penal Code which is liable to two years jail or fine or both. 2.2.1.6 Cyber crime against Property

Most people who involved in intellectual property crimes have intention to gain money from his act. One of the latest cases that related with intellectual property crime is the ADMINISTRATORS OF NINJAVIDEO WEBSITE PLEAD GUILTY TO CRIMINAL COPYRIGHT CONSPIRACY. The case is reported by the Department of Justice of Department of Defence, USA on October 2011. Joshua David Evans and Jeremy Lynn Andrew pleaded guilty for their roles in NinjaVideo.net, a website that provided millions of

users with the ability to illegally download infringing copies of copyright-protected movies and television programs in high-quality formats. In Malaysia, most intellectual property crimes related to the pirated VCDs and DVDs. There are such cases that related to the illegal download of computer software but such cases are not as highly reported as the pirates VCDs and DVDs. In April 2006, it has been reported that Malaysian government has set up scanner machines to trace the movement of the illegal activity at all the main airports. As a result, 188 cases worth RM6 million was reported in 2005 while in 2004 there were 184 cases worth RM1.7 million. (Source: News Straits Times)

2.2.1.7

Cyber crime against Organization

The article from Computerworld.com, has reported in November 2010, that a Malaysian man has been charged with hacking into major U.S. corporations, including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and FedComp, a company that processes financial transactions for credit unions. This is one of the cases that Malaysian has done cyber crime activity that related to other country. In August 2008, the US government officially charged 11 individuals for the theft and sale of over 40 million credit and debit card numbers. The card numbers were stolen from nine US retailers. The indictment includes computer intrusion, conspiracy, identity theft and fraud. This case is suspected to be the largest computer hacking and identity theft case in USA on that current reported year. Since the cases of unauthorized accessing of organization such as above are quite similar for both countries, it can be concluded that this matter is an international responsibility as it does not restricted to any specified countries. It can be occurred at any place, any time as we are dealing with the openness of the virtual space. 2.2.1.8 Cyber crime against Society

Most cases of child pornography are from USA. One of the cases is the Misty Series. After 10 years the child pornography has been spread out in the internet, the child known as Amy is fighting back for her pride by demanding that everyone convicted of possessing even a single Misty image pay her damages until her total claim of $3.4 million has been met.

In Malaysia, such cases are seldom. Most cases are the child prostitutions. In 2005, an average of about 150-160 local girls being detained annually for participation in immoral activities. (Malaysian Bar,2005). The cases might increases and may related to the child pornography as the irresponsible person may use internet as the medium to show and sale their products (child prostitutions). Compared to USA, they have been using the internet as the medium to promote their child prostitutions.

2.3

SUGGESTIONS

Prevention is always better than cure. It is always better to take certain precaution while operating the net. Disclose any information of you to prevent cyber stalking is important. Do not reveal any of the information such as phone number, house address and passwords in the chat room. We should always prevent the misuse of the photographs by avoid sending our photo to strangers in the chat room.