Cybercrime

Cybercrime is criminal activity done using

computers and the Internet. This includes
anything from downloading illegal music
files to stealing millions of dollars from
online bank accounts. Cybercrime also
includes non-monetary offenses, such as
creating and distributing viruses on other
computers or posting confidential business
information on the Internet.
 Spam

Spam, or the unsolicited sending out of junk e-

mails for commercial purposes, which is unlawful.
New anti-spam laws are being passed in various
countries which will hopefully limit the use of
unsolicited electronic communications.

Fraud

Computer fraud refers to the fallacious

misrepresentation of fact conveyed with an
intention of inducing another to do or refrain from
doing something that will ultimately lead to some
major kind of loss.
 Obscene or Offensive Content
The contents of some of the websites and other
electronic communications over the net can be really
distasteful, obscene or offensive for a variety of
reasons. In many countries such communications are
considered illegal. It can be very troubling if your
children are exposed to adult content.

Harassment
This cyber crime encompasses all the obscenities and
derogatory comments directed towards a specific
individual or individuals focusing for example on
gender, race, religion, nationality, and sexual
orientation. Harassment is the cybercrime most
commonly encountered in chat rooms or through
newsgroups.
 Drug Trafficking
Drug traffickers use the Internet as a medium for trading
their illegal substances by sending out enciphered e-mail
and other Internet Technology. Most of the drug
traffickers can be found arranging their illegal deals at
internet cafes, using courier websites for the delivery of
illegal packages containing drugs, and sharing formulas
for amphetamines in restricted-access chat rooms.

Cyber Terrorism
Due to the increase in cyber terrorism, the hacking into
official websites or the crashing of official websites,
government officials and Information Technology
security specialists have recently begun a significant
increase their mapping of potential security holes in
critical systems in order to better protect information
sensitive sites.
 Common Sources of Cybercrime

Researchers at Sophos Labs claim to have created

a language software that can figure out the host
country of malicious software by tracing the default
language of the computer on which it was
programmed. According to their analysis of the
default language linked up with about 19,000
samples at the end of last year, Americans and
other non-British English speakers, surprisingly,
produced a large proportion of malware. China
produced 30%, Brazil with 14.2% and Russia
produced 4.1% of the world's malware.
COMPUTER VIRUS
 What is Computer Virus?
 
Computer viruses are small software programs
that are designed to spread from one computer to
another and to interfere with computer operation. A virus
might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your
e-mail program to spread itself to other computers, or
even erase everything on your hard disk.
  Computer viruses are often spread by
attachments in e-mail messages or instant messaging
messages. That is why it is essential that you never
open e-mail attachments unless you know who it's from
and you are expecting it.
  Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny
images, greeting cards, or audio and video files.
Computer viruses also spread through downloads on the
Internet. They can be hidden in illicit software or other
files or programs you might download.
 What exactly the virus does depends on what
the virus is written to do. Their primary goals however
include replication and spreading, so viruses will
generally search for new targets that they can infect.
For example, a boot sector virus will attempt to install
itself on hard disks or floppy disks that it finds in the
system. File infectors may stay in memory and look
for programs being run that they can target for
infection.
"Malevolent" viruses that damage files or wreak
havoc in other ways will often act on triggers. There
are viruses that will only activate on particular days of
the year (such as the infamous "Friday the 13th"), or
act randomly, say, deleting a file every 8th time they
are run. Some viruses do nothing other than trying to
maximize their own infection to as many files and
Types of Computer Virus
 Resident Viruses

This type of virus is a permanent which dwells in the RAM

memory. From there it can overcome and interrupt all of
the operations executed by the system: corrupting files and
programs that are opened, closed, copied, renamed etc.

Examples include: Randex, CMJ, Meve, and MrKlunky.

Multipartite Viruses

Multipartite viruses are distributed through infected media

and usually hide in the memory. Gradually, the virus
moves to the boot sector of the hard drive and infects
executable files on the hard drive and later across the
computer system.
 Direct Action Viruses
The main purpose of this virus is to replicate and take action
when it is executed. When a specific condition is met, the
virus will go into action and infect files in the directory or
folder that it is in and in directories that are specified in the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file PATH. This batch file is always located
in the root directory of the hard disk and carries out certain
operations when the computer is booted.

Overwrite Viruses
Virus of this kind is characterized by the fact that it deletes
the information contained in the files that it infects, rendering
them partially or totally useless once they have been infected.
The only way to clean a file infected by an overwrite virus is to
delete the file completely, thus losing the original content.

Examples of this virus include: Way, Trj.Reboot, Trivial.88.D.

 Boot Virus
This type of virus affects the boot sector of a floppy or hard
disk. This is a crucial part of a disk, in which information on
the disk itself is stored together with a program that makes it
possible to boot (start) the computer from the disk.
The best way of avoiding boot viruses is to ensure that floppy
disks are write-protected and never start your computer with
an unknown floppy disk in the disk drive.
Examples of boot viruses include: Polyboot.B, AntiEXE.
Macro Virus
Macro viruses infect files that are created using certain
applications or programs that contain macros. These mini-
programs make it possible to automate series of operations
so that they are performed as a single action, thereby saving
the user from having to carry them out one by one.
Examples of macro viruses: Relax, Melissa.A, Bablas,
O97M/Y2K.
 Companion Viruses

Companion viruses can be considered file

infector viruses like resident or direct action types.
They are known as companion viruses because
once they get into the system they "accompany" the
other files that already exist. In other words, in order
to carry out their infection routines, companion
viruses can wait in memory until a program is run
(resident viruses) or act immediately by making
copies of themselves (direct action viruses).

Some examples include: Stator, Asimov.1539, and

Terrax.1069
Network Virus
Network viruses rapidly spread through a Local
Network Area (LAN), and sometimes throughout the
internet. Generally, network viruses multiply through
shared resources, i.e., shared drives and folders.
When the virus infects a computer, it searches
through the network to attack its new potential prey.
When the virus finishes infecting that computer, it
moves on to the next and the cycle repeats itself.

The most dangerous network viruses are Nimda and

SQLSlammer.
 Stealth Viruses
Stealth Viruses is some sort of viruses which try to
trick anti-virus software by intercepting its requests to
the operating system. It has ability to hide itself from
some antivirus software programs. Therefore, some
antivirus program cannot detect them.
Sparse Infectors
In order to spread widely, a virus must attempt to
avoid detection. To minimize the probability of its
being discovered a virus could use any number of
different techniques. It might, for example, only infect
every 20th time a file is executed; it might only infect
files whose lengths are within narrowly defined
ranges or whose names begin with letters in a certain
range of the alphabet. There are many other
possibilities.
 FAT Virus
The file allocation table or FAT is the part of a disk used to
connect information and is a vital part of the normal
functioning of the computer.
This type of virus attack can be especially dangerous, by
preventing access to certain sections of the disk where
important files are stored. Damage caused can result in
information losses from individual files or even entire
directories.
Worms
A worm is technically not a virus, but a program very
similar to a virus; it has the ability to self-replicate, and can
lead to negative effects on your system and most
importantly they are detected and eliminated by
antiviruses.
Examples of worms include: PSWBugbear.B,
Lovgate.F, Trile.C, Sobig.D, Mapson.
 Trojans or Trojan Horses

Another unsavory breed of malicious code (not a virus as

well) are Trojans or Trojan horses, which unlike viruses do
not reproduce by infecting other files, nor do they self-
replicate like worms.

Logic Bombs

They are not considered viruses because they do not

replicate. They are not even programs in their own right
but rather camouflaged segments of other programs.
Their objective is to destroy data on the computer
once certain conditions have been met. Logic bombs go
undetected until launched, and the results can be
destructive.