Overview of Cyber Crimes

Information Technology and the Internet have led to innovation and economic growth, but have also created new avenues for malicious actors to perpetrate crimes. The perpetrators range from sophisticated hackers to common criminals to foreign intelligence agencies and international terrorists. Cyber threats are increasing for governments, commercial enterprises and industry and above all ordinary citizens.

The all pervasive role of internet and computers and the networks can be gauged from the glance of a newspaper on any given day, on the lives of the citizens, corporations and governments world over. Number of lottery scams, fake profiles on social networking websites and, identity theft for fake banking transactions etc., have become news of daily routine and, are affecting increasing number of ordinary citizens. Commercial enterprises are becoming targets of frauds by insiders, commercial espionage and, intellectual property thefts causing enormous damages to reputations of the companies and, potentially huge financial losses. Finally, the threats of cyber terrorism and, espionage are closer to reality than were anytime in the past. The Wiki leaks episode of publishing of the classified diplomatic communications in public domain is a pointer to the things to come in future. Finally, Governments and regimes are being overthrown, through the sheer power of internet and social networks, as a galvanizing force. While some of these acts may not be classified as Cyber Crimes universally, as Law Enforcement Officers, it becomes necessary to understand and investigate the incidents as and when reported. During the discussion throughout this manual, the word ‘Cyber Crime(s)’ is used and would mean the same as a Computer Crime and/or Digital Crime for convenience, unless explicitly stated.

Thus, Cyber crime is the latest that is affecting the cyberspace and through it causing physical crimes in the real world, where either the computer is an object or subject of the conduct constituting crime. One way of defining cyber crime is: any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrument, target, or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime, i.e., unlawful acts wherein the computer is either a tool or a target or both.