Introduction

Nowadays, IT has already become part of our routine that gives a lot of benefits to internet users. However, internet has abused by the intellect users likes professional hackers / crackers, organised hackers, discontented employees and etc. The example of cyber crimes are cyber terrorism, plagiarism, hacking, online pornography, piracy and etc. Those examples are types of cyber crime. Cyber crime is very common in this world due to the improvement of technology. Cyber crime is an illegal behaviour which use computer as a medium to target the computer’s security systems and database. This happened due to the decreasing of moral ethical awareness.

The risks of cyber crime not only pose a new challenge to society but also governments, e-business companies, and also individuals as well. Moreover, cyber crime can be responsible for seriously undermining an economy by causing huge losses to companies. Since this issue already bring a lot of side effects to our society, we cannot despise it and we should take efficient actions to stop it.

The effort has been carried out by authorise to stop this issue such as cyber police, education, seminar to raise consciousness about the impact of cyber crime, heavy fines and prison.

Definition

There can be no one exhaustive definition about cybercrime. According to different resources, we can define cybercrime in various ways. Cybercrime is a term used broadly to describe activity in which computers or networks are a tool, a target, or a place of criminal activity. These categories are not exclusive and many activities can be characterized as falling in one or more categories. (Cyber Crime, n.d.)[1]

Cyber crime is also reported as “rimes perpetrated over the Internet, typically having to do with online fraud.” (Definition of: Cybercrime)[2]

MODE AND MANNER OF COMMITING CYBER CRIME:

1. Hacking-

Hacking is the gaining unauthorized access to a system or unauthorized use of a system, not necessarily for malicious purposes (O’Day, 2004, p. 20). Therefore this kind of offence is normally referred as hacking in the generic sense. For instance, hacker invades one's account to read one's privacy such as e-mail or account number.

2. Theft of information contained in electronic form-

Theft will normally embezzle the data in computer hard disks and removable storage media or try to damage it through virtual medium.

3. Email bombing-

This is a kind of action where someone sending lots of useless emails to others such as individuals, companies, organizations or parties .This phenomenon will cause a lot of inconvenience to other cyber users.

4. Data diddling-

This kind of attack involves altering raw data just before a computer processes it and then changing it back after the processing is completed. For example the electricity board faced similar problem of data diddling while the department was being computerised. (Pati, 2003)

5. Salami attacks-

Salami attacks are basically normal crime that often happened in the financial institutions for committing financial crimes. This type of crime usually unable to be noticed because the changes that doing on the financial statement is very small. There is an example for this case, “the Ziegler case wherein a logic bomb was introduced in the bank’s system, which deducted 10 cents from every account and deposited it in a particular account.” (Pati, 2003)

6. Denial of Service attack-

The computer of the victim is flooded with more requests than it can handle which cause it to crash. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is also a type of denial of service attack, in which the offenders are wide in number and widespread. E.g. Amazon, Yahoo. (Pati, 2003)

7. Virus-

Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file. After that, they will be spread to other files or other computers on a network to affect the data in computer. For example, “ love bug virus, which affected at least 5 % of the computers of the globe.”(Pati, 2003)

9. Trojan attacks-

This term has its origin in the word ‘Trojan horse’. In software field, this means an unauthorized programme, which passively gains control over another’s system by representing itself as an authorised programme. The most common form of installing a Trojan is through e-mail. For example, a Trojan was installed in the computer of a lady film director in the U.S. while chatting. (Pati, 2003)

10. Internet time thefts-

The theft usually use the victim's Internet surfing hour by obtaining their login ID and the password. For example, “Colonel Bajwa’s case- the Internet hours were used up by any other person. This was perhaps one of the first reported cases related to cyber crime in India.” ( Pati, 2003)

11. Web jacking-

“ Web jacking is a process where by control over the site of another is made backed by some consideration for it.”(Pati, 2003) In the main, the hacker gains access and control over the web site of another. In addition, he may also delete and alter the information on the site. As an example, “recently the site of MIT (Ministry of Information Technology) was hacked by the Pakistani hackers and some obscene matter was placed therein. Another case of web jacking is that of the ‘gold fish’ case. In this case the site was hacked and the information pertaining to gold fish was changed. Further a ransom of US $ 1 million was demanded as ransom. (Pati, 2003)

REASONS FOR CYBER CRIME:

The Concept of Law (Hart as cited in Pati, 2003) has said ‘human beings are vulnerable so rule of law is required to protect them’. Applying this to the cyberspace we may say that computers are vulnerable so rule of law is required to protect and safeguard them against cyber crime. The reasons for the vulnerability of computers may be said to be:

PREVENTION OF CYBER CRIME

It is crucial to take suitable prevention during operating the net. Saileshkumar Zarkar, technical advisor and network security consultant to the Mumbai Police Cyber crime Cell, had recommended the 5P mantra for online security. There are precaution, prevention, protection, preservation and perseverance. A netizen should keep in mind the following things-

1. to prevent cyber stalking. avoid disclosing any information pertaining to oneself. This would be better if not reveal to strangers about your identity in public place. (Pati, 2003)

2. always avoid sending any photograph online particularly to strangers and chat friends as there have been incidents of misuse of the photographs. (Pati, 2003)

3. always use latest and up date anti virus software to guard against virus attacks. (Pati, 2003)

4. always keep back up volumes so that one may not suffer data loss in case of virus contamination. (Pati, 2003)

5. never send your credit card number to any site that is not secured, to guard against frauds. (Pati, 2003)

6. always keep a watch on the sites that your children are accessing to prevent any kind of harassment or depravation in children. (Pati, 2003)

7. it is better to use a security programme that gives control over the cookies and send information back to the site as leaving the cookies unguarded might prove fatal. (Pati, 2003)

8. web site owners should watch traffic and check any irregularity on the site. Putting host-based intrusion detection devices on servers may do this. (Pati, 2003)

9. use of firewalls may be beneficial. (Pati, 2003)

10. web servers running public sites must be physically separate protected from internal corporate network. (Pati, 2003)

Adjudication of a Cyber Crime - On the directions of the Bombay High Court the Central Government has by a notification dated 25.03.03 has decided that the Secretary to the Information Technology Department in each state by designation would be appointed as the AO for each state.

Graph shows that growth in internet activity

There has been remarkable growth in the number of internet users participating in activities that are more likely to expose them to fraud, identity theft or other criminal attacks. This can be shown from the graph below.

Figure 1: Growth of Online Activities, 2000-2002(Henderson, 2005 , p.230)

Figure 2 :Types of Online Frauds, January 1 – December 31(Henderson, 2005 ,p.223)

Table shows analysis of cyber-crime in Japan

Table 1: Analysis of Cyber – Crime (Roderic & Peter, 2005, p. 17)

	2002	2001	2001	%
	Jan-Jun	Jan-Jun		Change
Crime against computer/data	18	33	63	-15
Computer fraud	12	28	48	-16
Illegal production/destruction of electro-magnetic data	5	2	11	3
Obstruction of business by destroying computer	1	3	4	2
Internet crime	443	319	712	214
Child prostitution	114	46	47	68
Child pornography	64	55	128	9
Fraud	59	53	103	6
Distribution of obscene object	59	49	103	6
Violation of juvenile protection ordinance	52	2	10	23
Intimidation	18	28	40	-10
Infringement of copyright	16	10	28	6
Defamation	13	18	42	-5
Others	49	58	141	21
Unauthorized computer	27	13	35	14
Total	488	365	810	123

ANIMATION VIDEO

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Conclusion

Since the cyber crime had already become a global issue, therefore a lot of efforts need to be carried out in order to stop this issue. Every aspect had to pay attention on this issue as well. Some merely look around and leave some are even nice enough to notify system administrators about the holes they have discovered.

However, hackers not only gain access to the private or personal information of a person but also use their identities to conduct a lot of illegal activities as well. Networked systems are vulnerable for several reasons: The Internet was not designed to be secure; connectivity has outpaced the effort to keep network secure and increasingly, network administrators are not well trained.

In conclusion, the only possible step is to make people aware of their rights and duties (to report crime as a collective duty towards the society) and further making the application of the laws more stringent to check crime. Undoubtedly the Act is a historical step in the cyber world. We should always stay alert to improve the security system of computer. The government should invest in cyber crime investigation and cooperate from other nations as the network is world wide.