As the criminal activities increase in the somatic world, the virtual world hasn’t been left undisturbed. Machines can be manipulated and no matter how the technology is bettered, a loop hole unseals leading to a series of unfortunate events such as data destruction, damage to business reputation, loss of business and company assets and heavy costs incurred to recover the lost data and protect them. There are however several other reasons, these being the more significant ones.
Cybercrime can be defined as an eclectic range of malicious undertakings that comprise intercepting data illegally, system intrusions that compromise network veracity and obtainability and copyright violations. Solicitation, production, distribution or sharing and even possession of child pornography is considered as cybercrime. Selling of drugs, arms or fake goods and unlawful gambling also form a part of cybercrime.
The advancement and expansion of internet has fuelled the cybercrime happenings as the criminal needn’t actually be present at the site if crime committed. There are ways to erase the trace and the crime and the criminal is never found or it takes ages to locate them.
Anonymity, fast speed of internet, no demarcation of borders and opportuneness facilitate cybercrimes such as stalking, theft and various types of monetary crimes.
There are individuals, groups or even small criminal organisations that are spread across the glove who are exceptionally involved in cybercrimes. What makes cybercrime distinct is that the culprit and the target may never come directly in contact with each other. In several occasions both of them are thousands of miles apart. The cybercriminals pick countries that don’t have any laws for cybercrime in place.
Besides having an economic impact, cybercrimes are also hazardous to the national security of any nation and is one of top crimes in the eyes of justice. At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there is a dedicated department for Cyber, in the United States of America that has been given the responsibility of battling cybercrime. Similarly there are other countries who have dedicated various teams to fight cybercrime.
Once computers were invented, people began to look for ways on how to breach its security and it goes back as far as 1903 and continues today also.