Cyber crime: 21st century criminals’ tool

By Rohan Masakorala

Isn’t it amazing that information is available in your palms from Timbuktu to New York City within seconds thanks to the brilliance of technology changing the world as we have never seen before? Your iPhone, tablet, ultrabook helps you enter into a new world of information, gossip and news and to be a modern day global citizen. It makes life easier as well as bringing the world to you. No doubt the benefits and the revolution that the World Wide Web has brought are unthinkable.

As technology evolves, thieves, criminals and the underworld too tend to use these positive developments to engage in their criminal activities.

Computer crime

To quote Wikipedia: “Computer crime refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. This refers to criminal exploitation of the Internet. Cybercrimes are defined as: ‘Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as internet (chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones (SMS/MMS).’ Such crimes may threaten a nation’s security and financial health. Issues surrounding this type of crime has become high-profile, particularly those surrounding cracking, copyright infringement, child pornography, and child grooming. There are also problems of privacy when confidential information is lost or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise. Internationally, both governmental and non-state actors engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Activity crossing international borders and involving the interests of at least one nation state is sometimes referred to as cyber warfare. The international legal system is attempting to hold actors accountable for their actions through the International Criminal Court.”

E-mail related crime

Email has fast emerged as the world’s most preferred form of communication. Billions of email messages travel the globe daily. Like any other form of communication, email is also misused by criminal elements. The ease, speed and relative anonymity of email has made it a powerful tool for criminals. It is common that all who use e-mail gets thousands of spam messages daily from various origins around the world. Selling pencils to donating and investing millions of dollars reaches you in various forms.

Some of the major email related crimes are:

1.Email spoofing: A spoofed email is one that appears to originate from one source but has actually emerged from another source. Falsifying the name and/or email address of the originator of the email.

2.Sending malicious codes through email: Emails are often the fastest and easiest ways to propagate malicious code over the internet. The Love Bug virus, for instance, reached millions of computers within 36 hours of its release from the Philippines thanks to email.

3.Email bombing: Email bombing refers to sending a large amount of emails to the victim resulting in the victim’s email account (in case of an individual) or servers (in case of a company or an email service provider) crashing.

4.Defamatory emails: Cyber-defamation or even cyber-slander as it is called can prove to be very harmful and even fatal to the people who have been made its victims.

5.Email frauds: Email spoofing is very often used to commit financial crimes. It becomes a simple thing not just to assume someone else’s identity but also to hide one’s own.

It is known that private e-mail accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo could be created hiding the actual identity of the criminal or insert names of companies, individuals to circulate viral mail with criminal intent. These e-mails could directly target an individual, a profession, a country, a business or a family. The most common criminal activity recorded is the defamatory e-mails sent via mass mailing.

Since the technology is available for these criminals they will use them also to hack computers, passwords and in particularly use as a modern day war fare to eliminate competition especially in the field of business.

In the developed countries key institutions such as the FBI have established special investigating units to handle cyber crime. It is understood, the mechanisms are available to track and trace origins of cyber crime. Interestingly, Sri Lanka too has now established special divisions to track and trace cyber crime and the Police department and the ICTA which comes under H E the President’s secretary has now established units with professionals to take up this emerging challenge where Sri Lankans too have been victims of such criminal activity in the recent past.

Individual citizens, families, corporate entities, and government agencies should have a good understanding of cyber crime as users of modern technology; the criminals could damage business activities and society at large, if unchecked. It is always best to report such crimes to the relevant authorities.

Currently the following departments in Sri Lanka are accepting such complaints and they would work with other international agencies and military intelligence to track cyber criminals:

1.The Internet Crime Complaint Centre (IC3) has been established at Police Headquarters with the collaboration of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Information Technology Division to receive and investigate regarding criminal complaints in the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime.

2.In anticipation of increased cyber security incidents as Sri Lanka’s IT infrastructure grows, Sri Lanka CERT|CC was established as Sri Lanka’s National CERT, by the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA). It is registered as a private limited liability company, and is a fully-owned subsidiary of ICTA.



(The writer is the CEO of the Shippers’ Academy Colombo, ex-Secretary General of JAAF/Asian Shippers’ Council, Board member International Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka (ICCSL) and Academic Syndicate Member – Institute of Human Resource Advancement (IHRA) University of Colombo and Alumnus of Connecticut State University, USA.)

Footnote

References made from

internet.