Isher Singh Jasrotia
With the development in the IT sector, the internet in India is also growing rapidly. It has given new opportunities in every field- be it entertainment, business, sports or education. There are two sides of a coin.
Besides many advantages of the cyber, there are many disadvantages like Cyber crime – illegal activity committed on the Internet. The Internet, along with its advantages, has also exposed us the security risks that come with connecting to a large network. Besides advantage of computers today these are also being misused for illegal activities like e-mail espionage, credit card fraud, spasm, software piracy and so on, which invade our privacy and offend our senses. Criminal activities in the cyberspace are on the rise.
“The modern thief can steal more with a computer than with a gun. Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb”.
– National Research Council, “Computers at Risk”, 1991.
The cyber crime occurs when there is cyber crime: “It is a criminal activity committed on the Internet. This is a broad term that describes everything from electronic cracking to denial of service attacks that causes electronic commerce sites to lose money”.
Cyber crimes are of different types such as a) Cybercrimes against persons (b) Cyber crimes against property (c) Cyber crimes against government.
Cyber crimes committed against persons include various crimes like transmission of child-pornography, harassment of any one with the use of a computer such as e-mail. The most important cyber crimes known today are trafficking, distribution, posting, and dissemination of obscene material including pornography and indecent exposure.
The potential harm of such crimes to humanity can hardly be amplified. This is one cybercrime which threatens to undermine the growth of the younger generation as also leave irreparable scars and injury on the younger generation, if not controlled. There is also damage done to a person when virus comes in the computer. The Melissa virus first appeared on the internet in March of 1999. It is estimated that the virus caused 80 million dollars in damages to computers worldwide i.e United States and Europe.
In the United States alone, the virus made its way through 1.2 million computers in one-fifth of the country’s largest businesses.
Various kinds of harassment can and do occur in cyberspace, or through the use of cyberspace. Harassment can be sexual, racial, religious, or other as has been occurring in the present context. Persons perpetuating such harassment are also guilty of cyber crimes.
Cyber harassment as a crime also brings us to another related area of violation of privacy of citizens which is of grave nature. No one likes any other person invading the invaluable and extremely touchy area of his or her own privacy.
The second category of cyber-crimes is that of cyber crimes against all forms of property. These crimes include computer vandalism (destruction of others’ property), transmission of harmful programmes.
The third category of cyber-crimes relate to cyber crimes against government. cyber terrorism is one distinct kind of crime in this category. The growth of internet has also shown that the medium of Cyberspace is being used by individuals and groups to threaten the international governments as also to terrorise the citizens of a country. This crime manifests itself into terrorism when an individual “cracks” into a government or military maintained website.
In a report of express India. com, it was said that internet was becoming a boon for the terrorist organisations. According to A. K Gupta, Deputy Director (Co-ordination), CBI, terrorist outfits are increasingly using internet to communicate and move funds. “Lashker-e-Toiba is collecting contributions online from its sympathisers all over the world. During the investigation of the Red Fort shootout in Dec. 2000, the accused Ashfaq Ahmed of this terrorist group revealed that the militants are making extensive use of the Internet to communicate with the operatives and the sympathisers and also using the medium for intra-bank transfer of funds”.
Cracking is amongst the gravest cyber-crimes known till date. It is a dreadful feeling to know that a stranger has broken into your computer systems without your knowledge and consent and has tampered with precious confidential data and information.
Coupled with this the actuality is that no computer system in the world is cracking proof. It is unanimously agreed that any and every system in the world can be cracked. The recent denial of service attacks seen over the popular commercial sites like E-bay, Yahoo, Amazon and others are a new category of cyber-crimes which are slowly emerging as being extremely dangerous.
