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Introduction to Cyber Crimes
- To gain access to (a computer file or network) illegally or without authorization: hacked the firm's personnel database. While a hacker is the person committing the act. A hacker maybe professional, hobbyist or even a criminal.
- A computer program that is designed to replicate itself by copying itself into the other programs stored in a computer. It may be benign or have a negative effect, such as causing a program to operate incorrectly or corrupting a computer's memory. In contrast, a worm is unlike a virus, it does not need to attach itself to an existing program. Worms almost always cause harm to the network, if only by consuming bandwidth whereas viruses almost always corrupt or modify files on a targeted computer. |
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- Phishing is the criminally fraudelent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, paswords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
- Which generally refers to any type of fraud scheme that uses one or more online services - such as chat rooms, e-mail, message boards, or Web sites - to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme.
- This involves flooding a computer resource with more requests than it can handle. This causes the resource (e.g. a web server) to crash thereby denying authorized users the service offered by the resource.
- This occurs when someone forcefully takes control of a website (by cracking the password and later changing it). The actual owner of the website does not have any more control over what appears on that website.
- A Trojan as this program is aptly called, is an unauthorized program which functions from inside what seems to be an authorized program, thereby concealing what it is actually doing. |
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Specific Cases in China
Even though cyber crimes need not originate from within the country to affect China, there are a surprising number of malicious codes spreading from within the country. To give a small breakdown of the numbers, in 2005 80 percent of computer operating systems in the country were infected by virus, 728,000 new items of computer virus were reported, and 9,100 Web sites were attacked by hackers, including 2,027 government Web sites. Another 391 government Web sites were attacked by hackers in January 2006.With such a small minority in China having access to the Internet, the amount of cyber crime is rather high.
In a separate point to show the ease of cyber crime, by Dan Geer, vice president and chief scientist at security software firm Verdasys:
To dramatize the point that everyone is at risk, Geer drew an analogy with bank robbing. To steal $1 million from a physical bank requires guns, planning and personal risk, whereas setting up an automated online hacking attack to steal $1 from one million individuals involves no danger to the criminal. He also warned that there are "no good neighborhoods" online.
With the pervasiveness of ICT, a potential cyber criminal could start working anywhere as long as he had the technology that he/she required. Most of these criminals work from home with knowledge of masking their Internet Addresses and how to disappear from the network.
In October 2006, a 25-year old resident in the Central city of Wuhan, Li Jun wrote a virus named "panda burning joss stick", also known as " Xiongmao Shaoxiang" in Chinese that affected millions of computers worldwide after he let it loose online. This did not stop after Li had been apprehended, as mutations of the virus were found. He had admitted to selling the codes to more than 120 people, earning illegal profits of about 100 thousand yuan (US$13,000). After infection by the virus, computer programs turn into an image of a panda holding three joss sticks. It can also hack into online gaming and the QQ instant messenger program.
The virus is also known as as Fujacks-I and FuJacks-J (also called worm.whboy in some media reports), is not limited by the Chinese-language version of windows and could spread across an infected PC quickly by using existing EXE files as hosts. It also spreads to network shares and onto removable disk devices such as USB keys, music players and cameras. Fujacks creates a hidden AUTORUN file on removable devices, in the hope of spreading the virus automatically when an infected device is inserted into another PC.
Screenshot: Computer Infected With "panda burning joss stick"
Another case of cyber crime includes the Dasher Cyber Worm earlier back in 2005, which had target only Chinese computers with devastation comparable to Blaster and Mydoom bugs, which infected millions of computers worldwide a couple of years ago. Dasher exploits a vulnerability in Windows operating systems from Windows 2000 on up. It can take complete control of an infected computer, view, change or delete data and create new accounts with full user rights, according to a Microsoft security bulletin. Security authorities say the worm can even steal passwords to online bank accounts.
Measures Put in Place
"The cyber space is transnational, so is the fight against computer virus, which calls for concerted efforts from worldwide specialists, governments, businesses and the general public, too."
Yang Xueshan, vice-director of the Information Technology Office of the State Council
China's public security authorities has also vowed an intensified crackdown on Internet frauds, thefts and other cyber crimes that endanger network security. A national survey conducted by China's public security authorities this year shows the country has improved its network and information security, with infection rate of computer virus slightly down from the previous years since 2004. In a conference held in Tianjin, the eighth annual gathering of the Anti-Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR) and carries the theme "wired to wireless, hacker to cyber-criminal". It has drawn industry insiders from China, the United States, Russia, France, Japan, Iceland and the Republic of Korea. AVAR is an independent and non-profit-making organization oriented in the Asia Pacific region. It was founded in June 1998 with the mission to prevent the spread of and damages by computer virus, and develop cooperative relationship among anti-virus researchers. Most its members are developers of anti-virus products as well as organizations and individuals researchers on virus prevention.
This along with measures already in place such as the Golden Shield and Big Mama systems, the Chinese government has begun their next steps towards fighting the war against the rise of cyber crime.
China has also successfully persuaded Microsoft to lodge a copy of the source code of Windows with the authorities to ensure that it is not possessing any software trap doors.
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Detailed information on Cyber Crimes