What is Computer Crime

Computer Crime

There are no precise, reliable statistics on the amount of computer crime and the economic loss to victims, partly because many of these crimes are apparently not detected by victims, many of these crimes are never reported to authorities, and partly because the losses are often difficult to calculate.

Nevertheless, there is a consensus among both law enforcement personnel and computer scientists who specialize in security that both the number of computer crime incidents and the sophistication of computer criminals is increasing rapidly. Estimates are that computer crime costs victims in the USA at least US$ 5×10⁸/year and the true

value of such crime might be substantially higher. Experts in computer security, who are not attorneys, speak of “information warfare”. While such “information warfare” is just another name for computer crime, the word “warfare” does fairly denote the amount of damage inflicted on society.

To understand the serious implications of computer crimes consider the following excerpt from a whitepaper by Eugene Kaspersky, the developer of a popular anti-virus software

➢        January 2007 – Russian hackers, with the aid of Swedish middle-men, steal €800,000 from Swedish bank Nordea;

➢        February 2007 – Brazilian police arrest 41 hackers for using a Trojan to steal bank account details used to make $4.74 million;

➢        February 2007 – 17 members of internet fraud gang arrested in Turkey for stealing up to $500,000;

➢        February 2007 – Li Jun, arrested for the “Panda burning Incense’ virus used to steal gaming and IM account names, is thought to have made around $13,000 by selling the malware;

➢        March 2007 – Five eastern Europeans imprisoned in the UK for credit card fraud they stole an estimated ₤1.7 million;

➢        June 2007 – 150 cyber criminals have bombarded

Italian users with fake e-mails, generating around €1,250,000 in ill-gotten gains;

➢        July 2007 – Russian cyber thieves allegedly used a Trojan to steal $500,000 from Turkish banks;

➢        August 2007 - Ukrainian Maxim Yastremsky [aka ‘Maksik’] detained in Turkey for allegedly making tens of millions of dollars from ID theft;

➢        September 2007 – Gregory Kopiloff charged in the US for allegedly using P2P file-sharing software Limewire and Soulseek to gather information used in ID fraud, allegedly made thousands of dollars in purchases using stolen data.

[Source The Cybercrime Ecosystem whitepaper by Eugene Kaspersky, Founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab]