What is Cybercrime ?

A crime that involves a computer and a network. Criminal exploitation of the internet is common. Hackers can invade privacy, financial theft (Credit card/net banking), stole/destroy confidential information stored, stole source code of a software or even deface a site or make a site inaccessible to the site owner.

There is no geographical boundary for the crime and it can be cross - border/ inter continental. As the different countries have different law of the land, it is finding difficult to punish the offenders. The various countries are thinking to form a common legal system and an International Criminal Court to deal with the Cyber criminals.

A variety of scams target consumers (Nigerian scam offering huge amount).

A computer or a network can be targeted by Viruses, malware or by Denial of Service attack.

A cyberterrorist is someone who intimidates or coerces a government or organization to advance his or her political or social objectives by launching computer-based attack against computers, network, and the information stored on them.

A person can be harassed by creating false profile with obscene/offensive/morphed content. This is common in chat rooms and in social network sites like facebook, orkut, twitter. etc.

Drug sellers are using encrypted email and restricted chat rooms for the easy sale of drugs and other illegal items.

Spam is the unsolicited sending of bulk emails for business purpose. The spammer send bulk SMS or email with a single click to a number of recipients.