Content and Website Abuse

Pick any geographic region where there is an absence of government and you will find the perfect setting for cybercriminals to set up a home base. For starters, look at Romania and the states of the former Soviet Union where you will find a 10-to-15-year evolution of hacking activity. As a place where that kind of activity is not pursued by local law enforcement, you will find a growing community of hackers. What was once a ragtag collection of second-rate hackers has matured into a thriving community of professional-class intrusion technicians.

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Internet crime is up again—and substantially, at that—for 2009. This, of course, should come as no surprise; it is no secret that this plague is spreading farther and deeper by the hour.

And here’s another unsurprising piece of news: at the head of the pack, same as the last many years: Internet Commerce Fraud.

The FBI Numbers

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NWC3), recently released its 2009 figures on cybercrime complaints received and referred to law enforcement.

From January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009, the (IC3) Web site received 336,655 complaint submissions. This was a 22.3% increase over 2008 when 275,284 complaints were received. Of the 336,655 complaints submitted to IC3, 146,663 were referred to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies around the country for further consideration.

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Introduction

Information technology poses numerous threats to businesses, institutions and individuals alike. Computer related threats may be either unintended or intended. People with criminal intentions normally conduct the latter. Technology has transformed seemingly timid individuals into high tech criminals. They have the potential to destroy the integrity or confidentiality of documents thus using the information for their own ill intentioned purposes. The essay shall examine internet crime and ways one can deal with it through IT security. (Honeynet, 2005)

How computer crime occurs

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