Cybercrimes

History of Computer Crimes

When writing about computer crime, one must ask, “Where to start”?  Since the beginning of digital 0s and1s, computer crime has been prevalent.  Kaybay (2012), in his seminal Computer Security Handbook, details the different way criminals have wreaked havoc.  In the early 1960’s and 1970’s, there were multiple instances of direct damage against computer centers caused by saboteurs.  There were credit card frauds, identity thefts, logic bombs, phone phreaking, data diddling, and extortion.  Then, the crooks started to get sophisticated.  In the 1970’s-1990’s, crimes caused by Trojan horses, worms, viruses, spam, and denial of services events caused $ Billions in damages. 

Types of Computer Crime

Computer crimes primarily involve the misuse of computer logic.  Crimes against hardware and physical security are relatively non-existent.  The real criminal focus were on logical security breaches and programmed threats.  Spafford, Heaphy and Ferbrache (1986) divided logical security breaches into the following major categories (excerpted below):   

Privacy and confidentiality

Integrity , which assures that data and programs are not modified without proper authority

Unimpaired service

Consistency, which ensures that the data and behavior we see today will be the same tomorrow

Controlling access to resources

Programmed threats, also called malicious software, also pose a significant threat to computer security, and also cause $Billions in damages. Spafford (1992) lists the main types of programmed threats (excerpted below):

Viruses, which are inserted into other computer programs
Worms, which can move from machine to machine across networks, and may have parts of themselves running on different machines
Trojan horses, which appear to be one sort of program, but actually are doing damage behind the scenes
Logic bombs, which check for particular conditions and then execute when those conditions arise, and
Bacteria or Rabbits, which multiply rapidly and fill up the computer's memory

In addition to logical security breaches and programmed threats, there are “hackers”, who sneak into a computer system without permission to compromise internal data. 

McAfee (2010), the security software giant, developed a list of the latest, most insidious computer crimes working their way around cyberspace. A survey of the top 5 crimes involving the most people over the last decade include:

Scare-ware, which is the the sale of fake antivirus softare
Phishing scams, which involves the tricking of users into giving up personal information (in 2009 alone, over ½ of a million sites were detected); via targeted emails, fake friend requests, spam, and social networking.
Phony websites, which involves fake sites that look real (phony banking sites, auction sites, and e-commerce
Online dating scams, involving viruses such as the “I Love You” virus, whereby the crook creates a personal relationship in order to ask for cash, merchandise or other favors
Nigerian scams, which involves advance fees

Are these scams and malware only a tip of the iceberg?

Who is winning?

FBI security guru Shawn Henry (now with a private security firm) said in the Wall Street Journal (see Barrett, 2012) that companies need to make drastic changes in the way computer systems are used to minimize damage to national security and the economy.  He says that too many companies fail to recognize the extent of the risk – financially & legally – and cost of operating vulnerable networks.  “"I don't see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo, it's an unsustainable model. Unsustainable in that you never get ahead, never become secure, never have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security,'' Henry said. "In many cases, the skills of the adversaries are so substantial that they just leap right over the fence, and you don't ever hear an alarm go off.  Companies need to be hunting inside the perimeter of their network.”  What should leadership do to combat cybercrimes?  Henry stated the obvious: "If leadership doesn't say, 'This is important, let's sit down and come up with a plan right now in our organization; let's have a strategy,' then it's never going to happen…”

 

References

Barrett, D. (2012, March 28). U.S. Outgunned in Hacker War. The Wall Street Journal.

Kabay, M. (2012). History of Computer Crime. In Computer security handbook, 5th edition, 2, 27. Wiley.

McAfee. (2010). A good decade for cybercrime: McAfee's look back at ten years of cypercrime. Santa Clara, CA: McAfee, Inc.

Spafford, E. (1992). Are computer hacker break-ins ethical? Journal of Systems and Software, 17, 41-47.

Spafford, E., Heaphy, K., & Ferbrache, D. (. (1989). Computer viruses: Dealing with electronic vandalism and programmed threats. Arlington, VA: ADAPSO (now ITAA).