Q. What do you understand cyber crime?

What are the various

kinds of cyber crime in India? Cyber terrorism.

Definition of Cyber Crime:-

We may define cyber crime as “criminal activity involving the information technology
infrastructure, including illegal access/unauthorised access, illegal interception by technical
means of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system,
data interference, unauthorized damaging, deletion, deterioration, alteration or suppression of
computer data, system interference i.e. interfering with the functioning of a computer system
by inputting, transmitting, damaging, deleting, deterioration, altering or suppressing computer
data, misuse of devices, forgery (ID theft), and electronic fraud.

Cyber crimes by using computers:- Cyber crime is a term used broadly to describe
criminal activity in which computers or computer 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.

As the new millennium dawned, the computer has gained popularity in every aspect
of our lives. This includes the use of computers by persons involved in the commission of
crimes. Today, computers play a major role in almost every crime that is committed.

The term cyber crime is widely used to describing criminal activity in which the
computer or network is a necessary part of the crime, the term is also popularly used to
include traditional crimes in which computers or networks are used to facilitate the illicit
activity or where a computer or network contains stored evidence of a traditional crime.

-:VARIOUS KINDS OF CYBER CRIME:-

Cyber Crime is an evil having its origin in the growing dependence on computers in
modern life. The following are some types of cyber crimes where in the computer is a tool for
an unlawful act.
 Financial Crime:-This would include cheating, credit card frauds, money laundering
etc.

 Cyber Pornography:- This would include pornographic websites, pornographic

magazines produced using computer and the Internet to download and transmit
pornographic pictures, photos, writing etc.

 Sale of illegal articles:- This would include sale of narcotics, weapons and wild life
etc, by posting information on websites, bulletin boards or simply by using e-mail
communications.

 Online Gambling:- There are millions of websites, all hosted on servers abroad, that
often online gambling. They are fronts for money laundering.

 Intellectual Property Crimes:- These include copyright infringement, trademark

violation, patent violations, domain name registration, software piracy etc.
 E-mail forging:- E-mail forging occurs where one computer on a network pretends to
the identity of another computer on the network. A spoofed e-mail is one that appears
to originate from one source but actually has been sent from another source.

 Forgery:- Counterfeit currency notes, postage and revenue stamps, mark sheets etc.,
can be forged using sophisticated computer, printers and scanners.

 Cyber defamation:-This occurs when defamation takes place with the help of
computers and or the Internet e.g., someone published defamatory matter about
someone on a websites or sends e-mail containing defamatory information to all of
that person’s friends.

 Hacking:- Hacking means unauthorized attempts to bypass the security mechanisms

of an information system or network.

 E-mail bombing:- This refers to sending a large number of e-mails to the victim
resulting in the victim’s e-mail account or mail servers crashing.

 Data diddling:- This kind of attack involves altering the raw data just before it is
processed by a computer and then changing it back after the processing is completed.

 Salami attacks:- Those attacks are used for the commission of financial crimes. The
key here is to make the alteration so insignificant that in a single case it would go
completely unnoticed e.g., a bank employee inserts a program into bank’s servers that
deducts a small amount from the account of every customer.

 Denial of Service:- This involves flooding customer resources with more requests
than it can handle. This causes the resources to crash thereby denying authorised users
the service offered by the resources.

 Virus:- They are the programmes that attach themselves to a computer or a file and
then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They
usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it.
Five famous computer viruses ever created in history are:-
(i) Creeper- 1971;
(ii) Michelangelo-1991;
(iii) I Love You-2000;
(iv) Code Red- 2001; and
(v) Conficker-2008.

 Trojan Horse:- This is an unauthorised program which functions from inside what
seems to be an authorised programme, thereby concealing what it is actually doing.

 Internet time theft:-This connotes the usage by an unauthorised person of the

Internet hours paid for by another person.

 Theft of information:- This includes information stored in computer hard disk,

removable storage media etc.
  Theft of computer system:- This type of offence involves the theft of computer,
some part of a computer or a peripheral attached to the computer.

Physically damaging a computer system:-This crime is committed by physically damaging

a computer or its peripherals.

Discuss provisions relating to Cyber Terrorism:

Terrorism means intentionally creating fear or horror in the minds of the public and intimidating
them by using force or weapons or other means. This is done in pursuit of some unreasonable
political, religious, or financial objectives.

Cyber Terrorism means the use of cyber space to cause harm to the general public and disrupt the
integrity and sovereignty of the target country. Cyber space refers to the electronic medium or the
interconnected network of computers.

Black’s Law dictionary defines cyber terrorism as the act of “Making new viruses to hack
websites, computers, and networks”.

The U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation defines cyber terrorism as a premeditated attack
against a computer system, computer data, programs and other information with the sole aim of
violence against clandestine agents and subnational groups.

Definition as per Information Technology Act, 2000 (“IT Act”)

Section 66F of the IT Act defines ‘Cyber Terrorism’ as all those acts by any person with an intent
to create threat to the unity, integrity, sovereignty and security of the nation or create terror in
minds of people or section of people by way of disrupting the authorised access to a computer
resource or getting access to a computer resource through unauthorised means or causing damage
to computer network. If these acts cause injuries to persons, cause the death of any person,
damage or destruct any property, cause disruption of essential supplies or services, or negatively
affect the critical information structure, they become punishable in nature.

It also includes all those acts committed knowingly or intentionally in connection to getting
access to a computer resource in an unauthorized way and that the data so obtained was restricted
in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of the nation.

Modes of Cyber Terrorism

The terrorists commit the crime of cyber terrorism in any or all of the following ways:
1. Hacking into the systems and databases owned by the government of the target
country and appropriating sensitive information of national importance.
2. Destructing and destroying the entire database of the government hosted on cyber
space along with all backups by introducing a virus or malware into the systems.
3. Temporarily causing disruptions to the network of the government of the target nation
and distracting the top officials so that they can pursue other means of terrorism.
4. Distributed denial of service attack (“DDOS”): The terrorists through this attack first
infect the systems by introducing viruses and then take control over the systems. The
systems are then accessed by the terrorists from any location who manipulate the data
and access the information.

Cyber Terrorism in Cyber Law

The salient provisions of the IT Act in relation to preventing cyber terrorism are:

Section 66F of the IT Act defines cyber terrorism. This Section has been introduced by
way of amendment to the Act in the year 2008. This amendment was the outcome of the
infamous 26/11 terror attack in India. The terrorists, in this case, made use of the
communication services to abet the terrorists who carried out a series of 12 shooting
attacks throughout the city of Mumbai. This tragedy is a classic example of terrorism
using the cyber network.

This Section also prescribes the punishment for those who commit or conspire to commit
cyber terrorism. According to the Section, such people shall be punishable with
imprisonment which may extend to imprisonment for life.

However, it is pertinent to note that the cyber space is evolving every day and new
loopholes have emerged in this definition of cyber terrorism.