FREE ESSAY ON COMPUTER CRIME

COMPUTER CRIME

Computer Crime
Billions of dollars in losses have already been discovered. Billions more have gone
undetected. Trillions will be stolen, most without detection, by the emerging master
criminal of the twenty-first century--the computer crime offender. Worst of all, anyone
who is computer literate can become a computer criminal. He or she is everyman,
everywoman, or even everychild. The crime itself will often be virtual in
nature--sometimes recorded, more often not--occurring only on the Internet, with the only
record being electronic impulses.
Before discussing Internet crimes, we can expect to see in the years ahead, let's look at
the good news: The most-dreaded types of offenses--crimes such as murder, rape, assault,
robbery, burglary, and vehicle theft--will be brought under control in the years ahead by
a combination of technology and proactive community policing. Creation of the cashless
society, for example, will eliminate most of the rewards for robbers and muggers, while
computer-controlled smart houses and cars will thwart burglars and auto thieves.
Implanted bodily function monitors and chemical drips (such as sober-up drugs and
synthesized hormones) will keep most of the sexually and physically violent offenders
under control.
But computer criminals--ranging in age from preteen to senior citizen--will have ample
opportunities to violate citizens' rights for fun and profit, and stopping them will
require much more effort. Currently, we have only primitive knowledge about these
lawbreakers: Typically, they are seen only as nuisances or even admired as innovators or
computer whizzes. But increasingly, the hacker is being replaced by the menacing
cracker--an individual or member of a group intent on using the Internet for illegal
profit or terrorism.
Access to the Internet has begun to expand geometrically, and technology is making the
Internet even more friendly and affordable for millions of users. But foolproof
protective systems can probably never be developed, although some high-tech entrepreneurs
are certainly trying. Even if a totally secure system could ever be developed, it would
likely disrupt the free flow of information--an unacceptable intrusion to most users. In
fact, it is the ease of access that is driving this rapidly expanding field of crime.
What are the major computer crimes being committed, how, and by whom? More importantly,
where is computer crime headed in the twenty-first century? Let's look at five crime
categories: communications, government, business, stalking, and virtual crimes.
COMMUNICATIONS CRIMES Already, cellular theft and phone fraud have become major crimes.
Low-tech thieves in airports and bus terminals use binoculars to steal calling-card
access numbers as unsuspecting callers punch in their phone codes. Other thieves park
vans beside busy interstate highways and use equipment obtained from shopping mall
electronics stores to steal cellular phone access codes from the air. Within moments of
these thefts, international calls are being made with the stolen numbers in what is
becoming a multibillion-dollar-a-year criminal industry.
Phone company employees, meanwhile, are also stealing and selling calling card numbers,
resulting in more hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized calls. In 1994, an MCI
engineer was charged with selling 60,000 calling card numbers for $3 to $5 each,
resulting in more than $50 million in illegal long-distance charges. In another case,
when a phone company tried to institute a call-forwarding program, crackers quickly
defrauded the system of more money than the company stood to make in legal profits.
In the future, the opportunities for hacking and cracking will escalate, with telephones,
computers, faxes, and televisions interconnected to provide instantaneous audiovisual
communication and transmission of materials among individuals. The wide appeal of new
multimedia communication systems will likely create such a huge volume of subscribers
that the price will plummet and make access by all possible. But if billions of dollars
of losses are to thieves, compounded by billions more required to repair damages created
by system terrorists, the cost might become prohibitive to all but the wealthy.
COMPUTER CRIMES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT In 1995, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service
instituted stringent new regulations on electronic tax filing and returns. This move was
to stop a rash of fraud that cost taxpayers millions in 1994: Returns that were processed
quickly via this method turned out to be for tens of thousands of fictitious corporations
and individuals. Similarly, in an attempt to stop food-stamp fraud, the government issued
electronic debit cards to a trial population and plans to go nationwide with the system
later in the decade. However, reports show that many recipients are selling their
benefits for cash--50 to 60 on a dollar--to brokers who then receive full payment.
"Cyberpunks" regularly break into government computer systems, usually out of curiosity
and for the thrill of the challenge. They often intercept classified data and sometimes
even interrupt and change systems. One U.S. Justice Department official reported that
military computers are the most vulnerable, even less secure than university computers.
This official noted that, during Operation Desert Storm, hackers were able to track both
actual and planned troop movements.
James V. Christy II, director of an Air Force unit of computer-crime investigators, set
up a team of hackers to test the security of military computer systems. He reported that
the hackers broke into Pentagon systems within 15 seconds and went on to break into over
200 Air Force systems with no one reporting or even recognizing the break-ins.
Ironically, computer hackers often beat the system using the very technology intended to
stop them. For example, federal law-enforcement agencies use an Escrowed Encryption
Standard to protect classified information and a chip-specific key to decrypt the system.
Experienced hackers can easily discover the key and use it to obtain passwords, gaining
full access to encrypted systems.
Newer, more-secure encryption systems for protecting government and international
business transactions require storing the keys in escrow with a specific government
agency--usually the U.S. Treasury Department. 
Hackers find this security solution unacceptable because it slows the free flow of
information and puts almost all sensitive and important data in the hands of government
officials. This is seen by many as being dangerous to individual freedoms and a major
step in the direction of creating a class structure based on the information rich and
information poor..
As more government data is stored in computers, protection will become both more vital
and more difficult. When the livelihood of an individual depends on data in government
computers, the temptation to adjust that record to increase benefits and reduce charges
will be great. Many will try to do the adjusting themselves; others will be willing
customers for a burgeoning black market of professional crackers. For those who have
little need for government benefits but would like to eliminate their tax liability, a
highly destructive method would be to plant a computer virus in government computers to
destroy large numbers of records. In this way, suspicion would not fall on an
individual.
TARGETING BUSINESS Today, most banking is done by electronic impulse, surpassing checks
and cash by a wide margin. In the near future, nearly all business transactions will be
electronic. Thus, access to business computers equals access to money.
Recently, computer hacker John Lee, a founder of the infamous Masters of Deception hacker
group, discussed his 10-year career, which began when he was 12 years old and included a
one-year prison term in his late teens. Without admitting to any wrongdoing, Lee said
that he could commit a crime with five keystrokes on the computer. He could: (1) change
credit records and bank balances; (2) get free limousines, airplane flights, hotel rooms,
and meals without anyone being billed; (3) change utility and rent rates; (4) distribute
computer software programs free to all on the Internet; and (5) easily obtain insider
trading information. Though prison was no fun, Lee admitted that he would certainly be
tempted to do it all again.
In a groundbreaking study published in Criminal Justice Review in the spring of 1994,
Jerome E. Jackson of the California State University at Fresno reported the results of a
study of a new group of criminals he called fraud masters. These professional thieves
obtain credit cards via fake applications, or by electronic theft, and pass them around
among their peers internationally for profit. These young men and women want the good
life after growing up in poverty. They are proud of their skills of deception and
arrogant 
enough to feel they won't be caught. None of those in the five-year case study were
caught.
As seen in the $50-million-plus losses in the MCI case, a far greater threat to
businesses than hackers are disgruntled and financially struggling employees. As internal
theft from retail stores has always been many times greater in volume than theft from
shoplifters, robbers, and burglars, theft by employees armed with inside information and
computer access is and will continue to be a much larger problem than intrusion by
hackers, crackers, and terrorists combined. By the turn of the century, 80% of Americans
will process information as a major part of their employment, according to a United Way
study.
In addition, the future portends new and brighter for-profit invasion of business
computers. As one Justice Department official says, This technology in the hands of
children today is technology that adults don't understand. The first generation of
computer-literate citizens will reach adulthood shortly after the turn of the century and
will surely open a new age in the annals of crime and crime fighting.
COMPUTER-STALKING One frightening type of computer criminal emerging rapidly is the
"cyberstalker." Possibly the most disturbing of these criminals is the pedophile that
surfs computer bulletin boards, filled with bright young boys and girls, in search of
victims. He develops a relationship and then seeks to meet the child in person to pursue
his sexual intentions. Already recognized as a serious problem, cyberstalking has spawned
the "cybercop" --a police officer assigned to computer bulletin boards in search of these
pedophiles. Once a suspect is spotted, the cybercop plays the role of a naive youngster
and makes himself or herself available for a meeting with the suspect in hopes of gaining
evidence for an arrest.
Also on the network, in search of pedophiles, are computer pornography sellers who offer
magazine-quality color photographs of young boys and girls in a variety of sexually
suggestive or actual sexual acts. Such a ring was broken up in 1994 and was found to have
clients in several countries, with the pictures themselves transmitted from Denmark.
Another type of stalker expected to be seen more in the future is the emotionally
disturbed loner, seeking attention and companionship through the Internet, and who often
becomes obsessed with a bulletin board friend. If this person obtains personal
information about the acquaintance, he or she sometimes seeks a close, often smothering
relationship. If spurned, the stalker launches a campaign of harassment, moving into
real-space harassment if adequate information is obtained. Vengeance can take many forms,
from ruining credit records and charging multiple purchases to the victim to creating
criminal records and sending letters to employers informing them of the shady background
of the victim.
In the twenty-first century, with access to the Internet available to all and information
from data banks networked into dossiers reserved for official use only (but easily
accessible to hackers and 
crackers), stalking will not only increase but be facilitated by a new generation of
portable computers. Organic nanocomputers may one day be implanted in the human brain,
making possible a new crime: mindstalking. Unauthorized intrusion and seduction will
reach directly into the victim's brain, making the stalker harder to evade and even more
difficult to escape.
VIRTUAL CRIMES Stock and bond fraud is already appearing on the Internet--stocks and
bonds that appear on the markets, are actively traded for a short time, and then
disappear. The stocks and bonds are nonexistent; only the electronic impulses are real.
In a recent case, a trader was paid $9 million in commissions for what appeared to be
some $100 million in sales of bonds. But investigators now feel that these bonds may
never have changed hands at all, except over the Internet. In the future, a
virtual-reality expert could create a hologram in the form of a respected stockbroker or
real estate broker, then advise clients on the Internet to buy certain stocks, bonds, or
real estate. Unsuspecting victims acting on the advice might later find that they had
enlarged the coffers of the virtual-reality expert, while buying worthless or nonexistent
properties.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in what might be tagged as virtual crime--offenses
based on a reality that only exists over the computer. As virtual reality becomes
increasingly sophisticated, it is the young adults in the first decade of the
twenty-first century who--having grown up with virtual reality--will create the software
and determine the legal and criminal uses of this technology. And with virtual reality
potentially reaching directly into the brains of recipients via organic computers, the
ability to separate reality from the truth outside, will be one of the greatest
challenges of the twenty-first century.
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EXPECTATIONS The outlook for curtailing computer crime by technology
or conventional law-enforcement methods is bleak. Most agencies do not have the personnel
or the skills to cope with such offenses, and to date all high-tech approaches have been
met by almost immediate turnabouts by hackers or crackers.
As individuals see and talk to each other over computers in the next few years, and as
nanotechnology makes computers even more portable, new technology will emerge to protect
data. But simplifying systems to make them more universally acceptable and accessible
will also make them more vulnerable to intruders.
Control of access by optical patterns, DNA identification, voice spectrographs,
encryption, and other methods may slow down hackers, but no method is foolproof or
presents much of a challenge to today's most-talented hackers. The trouble is that in the
future many more users will have skills far beyond those of today's crackers--a process
one expert termed the democratization of computer crime..
Still, there is much to be gained by easy access to the Internet. The cyberpunk
imperatives, a code subscribed to many hackers, include: (1) information should be free
so that the most capable can make the most of it; (2) the world will be better off if
entrepreneurs can obtain any data necessary to provide needed or desired new products and
services; and (3) decentralization of information protects us all from Big Brother..
Computer crime probably cannot be controlled by conventional methods. Technology is on
the side of the offender and motivation is high--it's fun, exciting, challenging, and
profitable. The only real help is one that has not proven very successful in recent
decades: conscience and personal values, the belief that theft, deception, and invasion
of privacy are simply unacceptable.
Behavioral psychologists argue that all values are learned by a system of rewards and, to
a lesser extent, 
punishment. Thus, if these values are necessary for survival, children should consciously
be conditioned to 
live by them. If all citizens--all computer users--were taught these values and sought to
live by them, 
the Internet could become the wondrous and friendly place its creators have envisioned.
Ironically, the greatest possible allies to be found in this search for values are the
adolescent hackers of the 1980s, many of whom are the software programmers of the 1990s.
In his book, Secrets of a Super-Hacker, a hacker named Knightmare says that true hackers
love to break into systems and leave proof of their skills, but do not hurt individuals
by stealing tangible goods or money, or destroying files or systems.
Hacker ethics, Knightmare writes, include informing computer managers about problems with
their security and offering to teach and share knowledge about computer security when
asked. Increasingly, government and business computer managers are asking. Many of the
Fortune 500 companies and numerous government agencies have hired hackers to test their
systems and even design new security protocols for them. Thus, hackers are helping to
protect the information superhighway from crackers and terrorists. As one hacker says,
Hackers love computers and they want the Net safe.
In conclusion, computer crime is major part of our technological society and should be
dealt with similarly to "real" crimes. In the electronic world, it is harder to find the
criminal and track him/her down. In the end, all advantages, such as using a computer,
come with their disadvantages, computer crime in it's worst form.
Bibliography
Works Cited
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Chidley, Joe. "Cracking the Net." Maclean's May 1995: 54-56.
Gill, Mark Stuart. "Cybercops take a byte out of computer crime." Smithsonian May 1997:
114-116.
Roush, Wade. "Hackers taking a byte out of computer crime." Technology Review April 1995:
32-40
Sussman, Vic S. "Policing cyberspace." U.S. News & World Report Jan 1995: 54-60
Witkin, Gordon. "Wanted, in cyberspace." U.S. News & World Report March 1994: 71