Cyber Crimes
Cyber crime is broadly defined as any illegal activity that involves a computer, another digital device or a computer network. Cyber crime includes common cyber security threats like social engineering, software vulnerability exploits and network attacks. But it also includes criminal acts like hacktivist protests, harassment and extortion, money laundering, and more.
Types of Cyber Crime
The US Department of Justice identifies three types of cyber crime in situations where:
The US Department of Justice identifies three types of cyber crime in situations where:
A computer is the target of the attack—for example, a data breach on a corporate network
A computer is the weapon for an attack—for example, a denial of service (DoS) attack
A computer is an accessory to a criminal act—for example, digital identity theft which leads to theft of funds from a bank account
Four Major Examples of Cyber Crime
In 2013-2016, Yahoo experienced a data breach which resulted in the theft of 3 billion user accounts. For some of these accounts, the attackers got hold of private information and passwords, which could be used to access user accounts in other online services. Much of this data is available today, either free or for a price, on the dark web.
A computer is the weapon for an attack—for example, a denial of service (DoS) attack
A computer is an accessory to a criminal act—for example, digital identity theft which leads to theft of funds from a bank account
Four Major Examples of Cyber Crime
In 2013-2016, Yahoo experienced a data breach which resulted in the theft of 3 billion user accounts. For some of these accounts, the attackers got hold of private information and passwords, which could be used to access user accounts in other online services. Much of this data is available today, either free or for a price, on the dark web.
In 2014, US retailer Home Depot’s point of sale systems were breached. Attackers stole 50 million personal credit cards, and for some time any credit card swiped at Home Depot stores was captured and its details compromised by the attackers.
In 2016, the largest ever distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack took place, which used over 1 million connected devices in the Internet of Things, which were compromised by the attackers due to software vulnerabilities. The attack caused outages in the global domain name system (DNS) and popular services including Twitter, Netflix and PayPal.
In 2017, the WannaCry attack, allegedly launched by North Korea, unleashed a type of ransomware which not only locks down content on user devices, but also rapidly spreads itself. WannaCry infected 300,000 computers around the world, and users were asked to pay hundreds of dollars to decrypt and restore their data.
