Generic Examples of Cyber Crime: Hacking is by no means a new phenomenon; it has existed in one form or another since the 1960s. For only a portion of the time since then has hacking been viewed as a crime and a situation that needs to be addressed.
Here are some generic examples of cyber Crime:
- Stealing passwords and usernames, or using vulnerabilities in a system to gain access, falls under the category of theft of access and the stealing of services and resources that the party would not otherwise be given access to. In some cases stealing credentials but not using them is enough to constitute a cybercrime. In a few states even sharing usernames and passwords with a friend or family member is a crime.
- Network intrusions are a form of digital trespassing where a party goes someplace that they would not otherwise have access to.
Access to any system or group of systems to which a party would not normally given access is considered a violation of the network and therefore a cybercrime.
In some cases the actual intrusions may not even involve hacking tools; the very act of logging into a guest account without permission may be sufficient to be considered an intrusion.
- Social engineering is both the simplest and the most complex form of hacking or exploiting a system by going after its weakest point, the human element. On the one hand, this is easy to attempt because the human being is many times the most accessible component of a system and the simplest to interact with. On the other hand, it can be extremely difficult to read both the spoken and unspoken cues to get information that may be useful to the attacker.
- Posting and/or transmitting illegal material has gotten to be a difficult problem to solve and deal with over the last decade. With the increased use of social media and other Internet-related services, illegal material can spread from one corner of the globe to another in a very short period of time.
- Fraud is the deception of another party or parties to elicit information or access typically for financial gain or to cause damage.
- Software piracy is the possession, duplication, or distribution of software in violation of a license agreement of the act of removing copy protection of other license-enforcing mechanism.
Again this has become a massive problem with the rise of the file-sharing services and other mechanism designed to ease sharing and distribution; in many cases the system are used for distribution without the system owner’s consent.
- Dumpster diving is the oldest and simplest way to gather material that has been discarded or left in unsecured or unguarded receptacles. Often, discarded data can be pieced together to reconstruct sensitive information.
- Malicious code refers to items such as viruses, worms, spyware, adware, rootkits, and other types of malware. This crime covers any type of software deliberately written to wreak havoc and destruction or disruption.
- Unauthorized destruction of alteration of information includes modifying, destroying, or tampering with information without permission.
- Embezzlement is a form of financial fraud that involves theft or redirection of funds as a result of violating a position of trust. The crime has been made much easier through the use of modern digital means.
- Data-diddling is the unauthorized modification of information to cover up activities.
- Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are ways to overload a system’s resources so it cannot provide the required services to legitimate users.
- Ransomware is a relatively newer class of malware that is designed to hunt down and encrypt files on a target system.
Once such files are found, the code will encrypt the data and then tell the victim that they must pay certain amount to get their data back.
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