Cyber crime is an unlawful act in which the computer is either a tool or a target victim or both. Cyber crime is committed with the help of communication devices in a network which may include even the telephone, mobile network or the internet.
Instances of cyber crime in which the computer network is a tool of criminal activity include copyright crimes and spamming. Examples of cyber crime in which the computer network is a target include denial of service attacks and unauthorized access.
Different kinds of cyber crimes cover:
Unauthorized access: It means trespassing into a protected computer system network.
E mail bombing: This refers to shooting large number of e- mails to the target victim resulting in his e- mail account or mail server crashing.
Internet time theft: This denotes unauthorized use of the internet hours paid for by another person.
Denial of service attacks: This denotes flooding of a computer with more requests than it can handle or service, causing the web server to crash. This breakdown results in denial of service to authorized users.
E-mail spoofing: A spoofed e-mail appears to have been dispatched from the genuine source though originating from a non genuine one.
Cyber pornography: This includes pornographic websites or online pornographic magazines.
Virus attack: Virus is a program that initially thrusts itself on a computer or a file and thereafter spreads to other computers or files on the network, altering or deleting data.
Worm attack: Unlike virus, worms do not need any host such as a file to get attached to but they multiply themselves indefinitely until and unless they eat up all the available space on the computer’s memory.
IPR crimes: These include trademark violation, copyright infringement and software piracy on the net.
