Module 9: Computer Crimes

1. Module 9: Computer Crimes • Introduction • History of Computer Crimes • Computer Systems Attacks • Motives • Costs and Social Consequences Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

2. Introductions • A computer crime is an illegal act that involves a computer system or computer related system like a telephone, microwave, satellite or other telecommunications system that connect one or more computers or computer related systems, either as an object of a crime, an instrument used to commit a crime or a repository of evidence related to a crime. • Illegal acts fall within the domains of the commission of crimes which a legislature of a state or a nation has specified and approved. Human acts using computers or computer related technologies that encroach within the limits of the commission’s boundaries, are considered illegal and they include: • Intrusions of the Public Switched Network • Intrusions into Public Packet Networks • Network integrity violations • Privacy violations • Industrial espionage Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

3. Pirated computer software • Fraud, • Internet/email abuse, • Using computers or computer technology to commit murder, terrorism, pornography and hacking • Most computer attacks on the resources above fall into three categories below. Our focus in this chapter will be on the last category [1,2]: • Natural or Inadvertent attack that include accidents originating from natural disaster like fire, floods, windstorms, lightening and earthquakes, and they usually occur very quickly without warning, and are beyond human capacity, often causing serious damage to affected cyberspace resources. • Human blunders, errors, and omissions that are usually caused by unintentional human actions. Unintended human actions are usually due to design problems, such attacks are called malfunctions. Malfunctions, though occurring more frequently than natural disasters, are as unpredictable as natural disasters. • Intentional threats that are actually intended and they originate from humans caused by illegal or criminal acts from either insiders or outsiders, recreational hackers, and criminal. For the remainder of this chapter we are going to focus on this. Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

4. History of Computer Crimes • Hacking, as a computer attack technique, utilizing the internetworking between computers and communication devices did not start until the 1970s . The first recorded hacking activity was in 1971 when John Draper, commonly known as "Captain Crunch," discovered that toy whistle from a cereal box can produce the precise tone of 2600 hertz, needed to make free long distance phone calls [4] . With this act, "Phreaking", a cousin of hacking, entered our language. • Hacking activities started picking up pace in the 1980s. The movie “WarGames" in 1983, the science fiction watched by millions, glamorized and popularized hacking and it is believed by many that the movie gave rise to the hacking phenomena. The first notable system penetration attack actually started in the mid-80s with the San Francisco based 414-Club. The 414- Club was the first national news making hacker group (414 was based on a 414 Area code in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.) Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

5. Small hacker groups started forming like the Legion of Doom in U.S.A. and the Chaos Computer Club in Germany. From that point on other headline making attacks from hacker groups in Australia, Germany, Argentina and U.S.A followed. Ever since, we have been on a wild ride. • In 1984, the 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, a hacker magazinewas launched and the following year, the Electronic hacking magazine Phrack was founded. • As the Internet grew as well as computer networks, hacker activities increased greatly that in 1986 the U.S. Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Hacker activities that had only been in U.S.A started to spread worldwide. • In 1987 the Italian hacker community launched the Decoder magazine similar to the U.S.A’s 2600: Hacker Quarterly [4]. Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

6. The first headline making hacking incident that used a virus and got national and indeed global headlines took place in 1988 when a Cornell graduate student created a computer virus that crashes 6,000 computers and effectively shut down the Internet for two days [5]. Robert Morris action forced the U.S.A government to form the federal Computer Emergency Response Team to investigate similar and related attacks on the nation’s computer networks. • The 1990s saw heightened hacking activities and serious computer network “near” meltdowns including the 1991 expectation without incident of the "Michelangelo" virus that was expected to crash computers on March 6, 1992, the artist's 517th birthday. In 1995 the notorious, self-styled hacker Kevin Mitnick was first arrested by the FBI on charges of computer fraud that involved the stealing of thousands of credit card numbers. • Mitnick’s hacking activities, however, started in the mid 1980s with his secret monitoring of e-mails of officials of companies like MCI and Digital Equipment. Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

7. The year 2000 probably saw the most costly and most powerful computer network attacks that included the “Melissa”, the “Love Bug”, the “Killer Resume”, and a number of devastating Distributed Denial of Service attacks. The following year, 2001, the elusive “Code Red” virus was released. The future of viruses is as unpredictable as the kinds of viruses themselves. Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

8. Types of Computer Attacks • Types of Computer Attacks: • Penetration Attack Type -involves breaking into a system using known security vulnerabilities to gain access to any cyberspace resource – • There is steady growth of these attacks – see the CERT Report below. • Denial of Service Attacks – they affect the system through diminishing the system’s ability to function; hence, they are capable of bringing a system downwithout destroying its resources Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

9. Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

10. Motives of Attacks • Vendetta/Revenge • Joke/Hoax/Prank • The Hacker's Ethics - This is a collection of motives that make up the hacker character • Terrorism • Political and Military Espionage • Business ( Competition) Espionage • Hate (national origin, gender, and race) • Personal gain/Fame/Fun/Notoriety • Ignorance Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza

11. Costs and Social Consequences • psychological effects – These depend on the attack motive and may result in long psychological effects such as hate. Psychological effects may lead to individual reclusion, increasing isolation, and such trends may lead to dangerous and costly repercussions on the individual, corporations and society as a whole. • moral decay – There is a moral imperative in all our actions. When human actions, whether bad or good, become so frequent, they create a level of familiarity that leads to acceptance as “normal”. This type of acceptance of actions formerly viewed as immoral and bad by society is moral decay. There are numerous e-attacks that can cause moral decay. In fact, because of the recent spree of DDoS, and email attacks, one wonders whether people doing these acts seriously consider them as immoral and illegal any more! • Loss of privacy – After the recent headline making e-attacks on CNN, Ebay, E*Trade, and Amazon, and the email attacks that wrenched havoc on global computers, there is a resurgence in the need for quick solutions to the problem that seems to have hit home Ethical and Social...J.M.Kizza