Any criminal activity carried over the internet is termed cybercrime. With 4.5 million attacks in July 2020, India had the highest number of attacks amongst all other countries, making it vital to raise general awareness about cybercrime.
1973 was the year when the first incident of cybercrime was documented. A teller used a computer at a New York bank to manipulate over two million dollars. And the first email spam was sent in the year 1978.
In this article, you will learn about cybercrime and the several risks and prevention strategies suggested by organizations like δικηγορος ηλεκτρονικο εγκλημα that are linked to it.
Cybercrime
Let us begin with the definition of cybercrime. It refers to criminal conduct committed with the help of a computer or other electronic equipment connected to the internet. Individuals or small groups of people with a bit of technical knowledge and highly organized worldwide criminal groups with very talented developers and specialists can engage in cybercrime.
Cybercriminals or hackers whose main objective is to generate money commit most of the cybercrimes. People and organizations are both involved in cybercrime. Apart from that, cybercriminals might use computers or networks to send viruses, malware, pornographic material, and other illegal data.
To make money, cybercriminals engage in a range of profit-driven criminal acts, including stealing and reselling identities, gaining access to financial accounts, and fraudulently using credit cards to obtain funds.
Most common cybercrimes
- Stolen credit card details: The most common cybercrime is when an individual’s credit card details are stolen and used illegally to acquire or purchase goods or services on the internet.
- Hacking government websites: the second most common type of cybercrime is tampering with sensitive government data.
- Stealing user accounts: A severe data breach was experienced by Yahoo from 2013 to 2016 that resulted in the theft of three billion user accounts. The attackers gained access to private information and passwords that were used to gain access to user accounts in other online services. Most of this data is still available on the dark web even today.
- Compromising lot devices: In the year 2016, more than one million connected devices in the IoT were compromised by attackers who took advantage of existing software vulnerabilities. It was the largest DDoS attack till today and one that caused outages in the global DNS affecting popular services including Netflix, PayPal, Twitter, and many more.
- Manipulating or stealing content: The WannaCry attack, which is said to be launched by North Korea, in 2017, unleashed ransomware that locked down content on users’ smartphones and computers. This ransomware rapidly multiplied itself and infected 300,000 computers worldwide. The victims had to pay a huge sum of dollars to restore their data.
- Phishing campaigns: The phishing campaigns penetrate corporate networks by sending authentic-looking false emails to users in an organization and tricking them into performing actions such as downloading attachments or clicking on links. The virus then spreads to the systems and ends up in the organizations’ networks eventually.
Some other common types of cybercrimes include the sale of illegal items, for example, drugs, arms, or counterfeit goods, illegal gambling, solicitation, production, distribution, or possession or selling of child pornography, etc.
