Cyber Crimes and Cyber Law

8/8/2019 Cyber Crimes and Cyber Law

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CYBER CRIMES AND CYBER LAW

Introduction:

In this era of modern world, there are lot of crimes and laws are their but I

choose Cyber Crime and Cyber law because everybody using computers. The new

millennium of computer world, it is involved every aspect of our lives. From the white

collar criminals to terrorist organization, Teenagers to adult and most important thing is

monetary transactions are moving on the internet. So Cyber crime is an evil having its

origin in the growing dependence on computers in modern life. Cyber-Crime is the latest

and perhaps the most specialized and dynamic field in cyber-laws. So we need to know

what cyber crime is and how cyber law helps us to protect, what are the changes that need

to be done in cyber law to make it more efficient.

Cyber Crime:

cyber crimes, "acts that are punishable by the Information Technology Act"

Which is not covered under Indian Penal Code, cyber crimes, such as email spoofing and

cyber defamation, sending threatening emails, pornography etc, Powerful definition of

cyber crime is "unlawful acts where in the computer is either a tool or a target or

incidental or both".

Computer Crime, E-Crime, Hi-Tech Crime or Electronic Crime is where a computer

is the target of a crime or is the means adopted to commit a crime. Most of these crimes

are not new. Criminals simply invent different ways to undertake standard criminal

activities such as fraud, theft, blackmail, forgery, and cheating using the new medium,

often involving the Internet.

Cyber Ethics:

Cyber ethics is separate from cyber law. Laws are formal written directives

that apply to everyone, interpreted by the judicial system, and enforced by the police.

Ethics is a broad philosophical concept that goes beyond simple right and wrong, and

looks towards "the good life". Ethics and morality in different circumstances may be

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varied. Each and everything which is opposed to public policy, against public welfare and

which may disturb public tranquility may be termed to be immoral and unethical. In the

past terms such as imperialism, colonialism, which were burning issues have given way

to cyber crime, hacking, 'cyber-ethics. Today in the present era there is a need to evolve

a 'cyber jurisprudence' based on which 'cyber ethics' can be evaluated.

Criminal Law and General Principles:

According to criminal law, certain persons are excluded from criminal

liability for their actions; they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. After

reaching the initial age, there may be levels of responsibility dictated by age and the type

of offense allegedly committed.

"Age of criminal responsibility" in two different ways:

1. As a definition of the process for dealing with alleged offenders, the range of ages

specifies the exemption of a child from the adult system of prosecution and punishment.

Most states develop special juvenile justice systems in parallel to the adult criminal

justice system. Children are unfocused into this system when they have committed what

would have been an offence in an adult.

2. The physical capacity of a child to commit a crime is deemed incapable of committing

some sexual or other acts requiring abilities of a more mature quality. The age of majority

is the doorstep of adulthood as it is idea in law. It is the sequential moment when children

legally assume majority control over their persons and their actions and decisions,

thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of their parents over and

for them.

But in the cyber world it is not possible to follow these traditional

principles of criminal law to fix liability. Statistics reveal that in the cyber world, most of

the offenders are those who are under the age of majority. Therefore, some other LAW

has to be evolved to deal with cyber criminals.

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CYBER CRIMES AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

. According to Donn Parker, For the first time in human history, computers and

automated processes make it possible to possess, not just commit, a crime. Today,

criminals can pass a complete crime in software from one to another, each improving or

adapting her or his needs.

The first recorded cyber crime took place in the year 1820. Cyber crime is an evil

having its origin in the growing dependence on computers in modern life. In a day and

age when everything from machinery life to nuclear power plants is being run on

computers, cyber crime has assumed rather threatening implications. Cyber crimes are

really violations of longstanding criminal law, perpetrated through the use of computers

or information networks. The problems of crime using computers will rarely require the

creation of new substantive criminal law. The serious problems posed by attacks against

computers and information systems, such as cruel hacking, spreading of viruses, and

denial of service attacks. Such attacks should be effectively prohibited.

Types of Cyber Crimes:

Following are the crimes can be committed against following groups:

1. Crime against individuals:-

a. Harassment through E mails.

b. Cyber Stalking.

c. Broadcasting of obscene material.

d. Hacking.

e. Defamation.

2.Crime against Individual Property

:-

a. Computer damage.

b. Hacking or Cracking.

c. Unauthorized control over computer system.

d. Transmitting of virus.

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3. Crime against organization (Government, firm company, Group of

individuals):-

a. Hacking and cracking.

b. Possession of unauthorized information.

c. Cyber terrorism against the government organization.

d. Distribution of pirated software & patent etc.,

4. Crime against society at large:

a. Pornography (especially child pornography).

b. Polluting youth through incident exposure.

Frequently used Cyber Crimes:

Hacking in simple term means illegal intrusion into a computer system without the

permission of the computer owner or user.

Denial of Service Attackthis is the act by a criminal, who floods the bandwidth of

the victims network or fills his e-mail box with spam mail depriving him of the services

he is entitled to access or provide. Denying authorized users the service offered by the

resource. Another variation to a typical denial of service attack is known as a Distributed

Denial of Service attack wherein the perpetrators are many and are geographicallywidespread. It is very difficult to control such attacks. The attack is initiated by sending

excessive demands to the victim's computer, exceeding the limit that the victim's servers

can support and making the servers crash.

Virus/Worms/Trojan Attackcomputer virus is a computer program that can infect

other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a copy of it.

Note that a program does not have to perform outright damage (such as deleting or

corrupting files) in order to be called a "virus". Worms unlike Viruses do not need a host

for attachments they make copies of themselves and do this repeatedly hence eating up all

the memory of the computer. Trojans are unauthorized programs which functions from

inside what seems to be an authorized program, thereby concealing what it is actually

doing.

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Software Piracy theft of software through the illegal copying of genuine programs orthe counterfeiting and distribution of products intended to pass for the original. Retail

revenue losses worldwide are ever increasing due to this Crime.

Cyber pornography is the threat to the female. This would include pornographicwebsites pornographic magazines produced using computers and the Internet download

and transmit pornographic pictures, photos, etc. Internet has provided a medium for the

facilitation of crimes like pornography. Cyber porn as it s popularly called is widespread.

Almost 50% of the web sites exhibit pornographic material on the Internet today.

Pornographic materials can be reproduced more quickly and cheaply on new media like

hard disks, floppy disk, flash drive, pen drive and CD-ROMs. The technology includes

photographs, images, full motion video clips and complete movies are also available.

Disadvantage with a media like this is easy availability and accessibility to children who

can now log on to pornographic web-sites from their own houses. Serious offences which

have universal disapproval like child pornography and far easier for offenders to hide and

propagate through the medium of the internet.

In incident, in Mumbai a Swiss couple would gather slum children and then

would force them to appear for obscene photographs. They would then upload thesephotographs to websites specially designed for pedophiles. The Mumbai police arrested

the couple for pornography.

Email spoofing A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, The more common method

used by men is to email vulgar photographs of themselves to women, praising their

beauty, and asking them for a date or inquiring how much they charge for services.

Besides sending explicit messages through e-mail, sms and chat, many also morph

photographs, placing the victims face on another, usually nude, body. These things

happen in every city only one in every 500 case is reported. Especially in India cities like

Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai was crossed the danger limit of the crime.

Morphing is editing the original picture by unauthorized user or fake identity. It was

identified that females pictures are downloaded by fake users and again re-posted or

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uploaded on different websites by creating fake profiles after editing it. This amounts to

violation of I.T. Act, 2000 and attracts sections 43 & 66 of the Act. The violator can also

be booked under IPC.

Cyber stalking is crimes in the modern world. It means "pursuing stealthily". Cyber

stalking involves following a person's movements across the Internet by posting

messages on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms

frequented by the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails etc. Cyber

Stalking mainly occurs with women, who are stalked by men, or children who are stalked

by adult predators or pedophiles. Typically, the cyber stalker's victim is new on the web,

and inexperienced with the rules of Internet safety. Their main targets are the mostly

females, children, emotionally weak or unstable, etc. It is believed that Over 75% of the

victims are female. The motives behind cyber stalking have been divided in to four

reasons, namely, for sexual harassment, for obsession for love, for revenge and hate and

for ego and power trips. The availability of free email and website space, as well as the

anonymity provided by these chat rooms and forums, has contributed to the increase of

cyber stalking as a form of harassment. There position of the cyber stalking in India has

reported in the following cases:

In the case of Manish Kathuria who was recently arrested by the New Delhi

Police. He was stalking an Indian lady, Ms Ritu Kohli by illegally chatting on the Web

site MIRC using her name. He used obscene and abusive language, and distributed her

residence telephone number, inviting people to chat with her on the phone. As a result of

which, Ritu kept getting obscene calls from everywhere, and people promptly talked dirty

with her. Finally, she called the Delhi police and reported the matter. Police traced the

culprit and filed a case under Section 509 of the Indian Penal Code for extreme violation

of others Right the modesty of Ritu Kohli.

Harassment through e-mails is not a new concept. It is very similar to harassing

through letters. Harassment includes blackmailing, threatening, discrimination, and even

cheating through email. E-harassments are similar to the letter harassment but creates

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problem quite often when posted from fake ids.

Vulnerability of children and cyber crimes:

In this computer world children are most vulnerable victims as they go through

visually in internet media and get confused. Criminologists have identified the possible

causes of computer crimes as Pedophilic activity; pornographic activity and stalking

activity where it is most likely hood of children being victim. In Pedophilic activity, the

programmer desires to sexually exploit or solicit children for sex through electronic

media. In most of the cases the offender provides identity on the services, giving false

personal information, or changes the same as many times as possible. These service areas

are in the nature of 'Kids Area' and are identified as Teens, Games and Chartroom which

a computer user makes contact with the other side through e- mail; may befriend with

and extract personal information and in gradual process may transmit mail containing sex

information.

In pornography, the service provider, misrepresents this identity and

dispatches a mail to a child user of computer for sending photographs for a carrier of

fashion or modeling, with an offer of incentive or money and sometimes they assure

their victims that such pictures are for personal or confidential use. When they receive

such pictures they interpolate the same through graphic program and convert them to

pornographic pictures such as putting the face of the victim on the nude body of the

person or convert them into intimate postures and release through internet for hacking

by users, without the knowledge of the victim.

Stalkers are individuals who are obsessed and very often intimidate the victims

and provide repeated messages for obtaining answers from them. Once they confirmaccess by the victim they follow the victim and harass and later make telephonic contacts

to develop intimacy and if possible sexually exploit them.

In order to avoid identification and to that extent criminal prosecution, the

service provider stipulates conditions of access as to 'Pass word' or download the message

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into a Floppy or pen drive to avoid criminal prosecution and mostly such cyber sexual

crimes are privately done or in such places where privacy is strictly maintained.

Consequently it becomes difficult to find the culprits.

Financial Crimes today most of us are using credit card, debit card, with these we try

to purchase in online system. Some white collar criminals smartly grab the details our

bank transaction. You simply have to type credit card number into www web page for

online transaction. If electronic transactions are not secured the credit card numbers can

be stolen by the hackers who can misuse this card by impersonating the credit card

owner.

Cyber Defamation law addresses harm to a person's reputation or good name through

slander and libel. The Internet has made it easier than ever before to broadcast

defamatory statements to a worldwide audience with impunity. For some time, courts

have struggled with remedies for Web defamation. The problem has been magnified by

the difficulty in identifying the perpetrator, and the degree to which Internet Service

Providers should be held accountable for facilitating the defamatory activity.

Internet Relay Chat servers have chat rooms in which people from anywhere theworld can come together and chat with each other. Criminals use it for meeting co-

conspirators. Hackers use it for discussing their exploits or sharing the techniques.

Pedophiles use chat rooms to attract small children. Cyber stalking is in order to harass a

woman her telephone numbers given to others as if she wants to befriend males.

Salami Attack in such crime criminals makes insignificant changes in such manner

that such changes would go unnoticed. Criminals make such program that deduct small

amount like Rs. 1.75 per month from the account of all customers of the bank and

deposits same in his account. In these cases no account holder will approach the bank for

such small amount but criminal gains huge amount.

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CYBER TERRORISM:

Cyber crime and cyber terrorism is both crimes of the cyber world. The

difference between the two however is with regard to the motive and the intention of the

performer. While a cyber crime can be described simply as an unlawful act wherein the

computer is either a tool or a target or both, cyber terrorism deserves a more detailed

definition. One can define cyber terrorism as a premeditated use of troublemaking

activities or the threat thereof, in cyber space, with the intention to further social,

ideological, religious, political or similar objectives, or to intimidate any person

objectives. Is the Internet the new Wild West? In the era of globalization: the use

of steganography as a means for communicating the terrorist design online Red Fort

case, E-mail threats in Taj Mahal Case, Supreme Court E mail Threat Case. The use ofinternet to plan and carry out the terrorists acts of September 11th World Trade Center

attack, and recently Mumbai bomb blast reflects the present condition and provides the

answer to the question that Is the internet the new Wild West?

Forms of Cyber Terrorism

i. Privacy Violation Right to privacy is a part of the right to life and personal

liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. With the advent ofinformation technology the traditional concept of right to privacy has taken new

dimensions, which require a different legal outlook. To meet this challenge recourse of

Information Technology Act, 2000 can be taken. The various provisions of the Act

rightly protect the online privacy rights of the citizens. Certain acts have been

categorized as offences and contraventions, which have tendency to encroach with the

privacy rights of the citizens.

ii. Secret information appropriation and data theft The information technology can be

misused for appropriating the valuable Government secrets and data of private

individuals and the Government and its agencies. A computer network owned by the

Government may contain valuable information concerning defense and other top secrets,

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which the Government will not wish to share otherwise. The same can be targeted by the

terrorists to facilitate their activities, including destruction of property.

iii. Network damage and disruptions The main aim of cyber terrorist activities is to

cause networks damage and their disruptions. This activity may divert the attention of the

security agencies for the time being thus giving the terrorists extra time and makes their

task comparatively easier. This process may involve a combination of computer

tampering, virus attacks, hacking, etc.

iv. Distributed denial of services attackThe cyber terrorists may also use the method of

distributed denial of services to overburden the Government and its agencies electronic

bases. This is made possible by first infecting several unprotected computers by way of

virus attacks and then taking control of them. Once control is obtained, they can be

manipulated from any locality by the terrorists. These infected computers are then made

to send information or demand in such a large number that the server of the victim

collapses. Further, due to this unnecessary Internet traffic the legitimate traffic is

prohibited from reaching the Government or its agencies computers. This results in

immense pecuniary and strategic loss to the government and its agencies.

CYBER CRIMINALS:

Kids and Teenagers It seems really difficult to believe but it is true. Most amateur

hackers and cyber criminals are teenagers. To them, who have just begin to understand

what appears to be a lot about computers, it is a matter of pride to have hacked into a

computer system or a website. There is also that little issue of appearing really smart

among friends. These young rebels may also commit cyber crimes without really

knowing that they are doing something wrong.

The increase in number of teenage offenders in cyber crimes are that many of

the offenders who are mainly young college students are unaware of its seriousness. In an

incident the Chennai city police have arrested an engineering college student from Tamil

Nadu for sending unwanted message to a chartered accountant. So it must be educate to

them about the seriousness and consequences of such crimes.

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Disgruntled Employees One can hardly believe how spiteful displeased employees

can become. Till now they had the option of going on strike against their employers.

Now, with the increase independence on computers and the automation of processes, it is

easier for disgruntled employees to do more harm to their employers by committing

computer related crimes, which can bring entire systems down.

Professional Hackers Extensive automation has resulted in business organizations

storing all their information in electronic form. Competitor organizations employ hackers

to steal industrial secrets and other information that could be beneficial to them. The

temptation to use professional hackers for industrial surveillance also stems from the fact

that physical presence required to gain access to important documents is rendered

needless if hacking can recover those.

Cyber Crimes and Indian Laws:

India has enacted the first I.T. Act, 2000 based on the UNCIRAL model

recommended by the general assembly of the United Nations by a resolution dated

30th.jan.1997. This Act came into force on 17 th October 2000. It has XIII chapters and 94

sections. It shall extend to the whole of India and, save as otherwise provided in this Act, it

applies also to any offence or contravention there under committed outside India by anyperson {section 1(2)}. In this ACT section 75 applies to offence or contravention committed

outside India by any person irrespective of his nationality, if such act involves a computer,

computer system or network located in India. IT Act confers Legal recognition of electronic

records and Digital Signatures [section 4, 5 of IT act 2000]. The preamble to this Act gives a

very clean picture in this regard. Chapter XI of this Act deals with offences or crimes along

with certain other provisions spotted in this Acts .The various offences which are provided

under this chapter are:

Tampering with computer source documents section 65

Hacking with computer system section 66

Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form section 67

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Directions of Controller to a subscriber to extend facilitates to decrypt information

-- Section 69

Access to protected system section 70

Penalty for Breach of confidentiality and privacy section 72

Publication for fraudulent purpose section 74

Cyber Crimes which is punishable under Various Indian laws:

Sending pornographic or obscene emails are punishable under Section 67 of the IT Act2000. An offence under this section is punishable on first conviction with imprisonment for a

term, which may extend to five years and with fine, which may extend to one lakh rupees. In

the event of a second or subsequent conviction the recommended punishment is

imprisonment for a term, which may extend to ten years and also with fine which may extend

to two lakh rupees.

Emails that are defamatory in nature are punishable under Section 500 of the Indian PenalCode (IPC), which recommends an imprisonment of up to two years or a fine or both.Threatening emails are punishable under the provisions of the IPC pertaining to criminal

intimidation, insult and annoyance (Chapter XXII), extortion (Chapter XVII).

Email spoofing is covered under provisions of the IPC relating to fraud, cheating bypersonating (Chapter XVII), forgery (Chapter XVIII).

Sending threatening messages by email Under section 503 of IPC 1860

Forgery of electronic records Under sections 463, 470, 471 of IPC 1860

Bogus websites, cyber frauds Under section 420 of IPC 1860

Email spoofing Under sections 416, 417, 463 of IPC 1860

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Web-Jacking Under sections 383 of IPC 1860

Positive Areas of IT ACT 2000:

Prior to the enactment of the IT Act, 2000 even an e-mail was not accepted under the

prevailing statutes of India as an accepted legal form of communication and as evidence in a

court of law. But the IT Act, 2000 changed this scenario by legal recognition of the electronic

format. In Public Interest Litigation, the Kerala high Court has accepted through an email is

an example.

In corporate sector, companies shall be able to carry out electronic commerce using the

legal infrastructure provided by the IT Act, 2000. Till the coming into effect of the Indian

Cyber law, the growth of electronic commerce was obstruct in our country basically because

there was no legal infrastructure to regulate commercial transactions online.

Corporate to have a statutory remedy if any one break into other computer systems or

networks and causes damages or copies data. The remedy provided by the IT Act, 2000 is in

the form of monetary damages, by the way of compensation, not exceeding Rs. 1, 00, 00,000.

After the implementation of IT act 2000, People who are cheated or affected by cyber

criminals can get remedy through this Act.

Negative Areas of IT ACT 2000:

Jurisdiction is the highly debatable issue as to the maintainability of any suits which hasbeen filed. Today with the growing arms of cyberspace the territorial boundaries seems to

vanish thus the concept of territorial jurisdiction as envisaged under S.16 of C.P.C. and S.2.of

the I.P.C. will have to give way to alternative method of dispute resolution.

Electronic commerce is based on the system of domain names. The IT Act, 2000 does noteven touch the issues relating to domain names. Even domain names have not been defined

and the rights and liabilities of domain name owners do not find any mention in the law.

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The IT Act, 2000 does not deal with any issues concerning the protection of IntellectualProperty Rights. Contentious yet very important issues concerning online copyrights,

trademarks and patents have been left untouched by the law, thereby leaving many loopholes.

The IT Act, 2000 has not tackled several vital issues pertaining to e-commerce sphere likeprivacy and content regulation to name a few. Privacy issues have not been touched at all.

The Indian Cyber law relates to its implementation. The IT Act, 2000 does not lay downparameters for its implementation. Also, when internet penetration in India is extremely low

and government and police officials, in general are not very computer knowledge, the new

Indian cyber law raises more questions than it answers. It seems that the Parliament would be

required to amend the IT Act, 2000 to remove the Negative areas mentioned above.

Issue Faced:

Awareness: Technology is changing very rapidly. So does the increase in Cyber crimes,No proper awareness shared with regard to crime and latest tools. People are so ignorant that

makes it effortless for cyber criminals to attack. People fear to report crimes and some crimes

are not properly recorded. Recently a report says only one crime is recorded for every 500

cyber crimes. The reason behind this is that the victim is either scared of police harassment

or wrong media publicity. For minority and marginalised groups who already bear the brunt

of media bias, reporting online harassment to the police may simply draw further unwanted

attention. The public is not aware of the resources and services that law enforcement could

provide them if being a victim of crime or witness.

Recently China has been manufacturing mobile phones that have cloned IME numberswhich is a current challenge faced in Mobile forensics.

Global Issues: Most of the IP addresses retrieved during investigation leads to servers orcomputers located abroad which have no identity, hence further investigations are blocked

and closed. Correspondence with bodies such as Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail is quite time

consuming and prolong the investigations.

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Wireless or Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared Issues: Latest wireless technologies whichprovide internet connections causes exploitation especially when it is not secured. This is the

present technology terrorists and radical activists exploit. This is another vulnerability that

law enforcement faces.

Above Mentioned are some of the major issues which faced while

implementation of LAW.

Judiciary and IT ACT 2000

The judicial bodies are not fully aware of Cyber crime and the way in which

investigations are carried out.

Even though, Cyber law courses available in India, it is difficult to find an experienced

cyber lawyer who is aware of Forensic analysis and technical terms.

There is no legal procedure for collecting, analyzing and presenting evidence in the court

of law. Hence the defense lawyer can always anticipate an ambiguity.

It is difficult to convince judicial bodies including judges and the tribunal when evidence

is in a digital format.

Some of the key points to make Efficient:

A committee of people with knowledge in the field of cyber crime can be appointed to

help judicial bodies.

New amendment should be made by parliament.

The training and public awareness programs, campaigns should be organized.

More Cyber crime police cells set up across the country.

Websites aid in creating awareness and encouraging reporting of cyber crime cases.

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Special Training must be given to forensic investigators and experts.

People should come forward to get secured and benefit of the Act.

Conclusion:

When there is a crime, then there will be a law to protect, like that the

Information Technology act 2000 was enacted when the country was facing the problem

of growing cyber crimes. This is the world computer. Computers stores huge amount of

data in small space and it is easy to access. One of the key elements that keep most

members of society honest is fear of being caught the deterrence factor. It offers the

criminal an opportunity of attacking his victims from the remoteness of a different

continent and the result of the crime are not immediately visible. So we need to come

forward and take some precautions to escape from the criminals even though law &

government protect as in order to prevent cyber crime it is important to educate everyone

and practice safe computing.

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Cyber Crimes and Cyber Law