week1 db cybercrime

Cybercrime

Automated Cybercrime

Not all cybercrimes are physically carried out by a human being. Unlike traditional crimes, certain types of cybercrime can be automated — they can be carried out by computer code that has been created and designed to attack a computer system (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Automated Cybercrime

Two types of automated cybercrime have so far arisen:

• Malware; the use of computer viruses, worms, and other programs to damage or steal data from a system.

• Denial of Service (DoS) attacks; the use of computer code to take over “innocent” computers and incorporate them into a cyberarmy that then attacks websites and other online systems (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Automated Cybercrime

Malware is a word created by blending “malicious” and “software.”

It denotes software that is designed to infiltrate or damage a computer without the owner’s knowledge and consent (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Automated Cybercrime

There are many types of malware, but most people are only familiar with two: viruses and worms.

A computer virus is a program that can copy itself and infect computers, much as a biological virus infects people (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Computer Viruses

• Viruses need a host to spread to other computers

• Computer viruses infect program code in one system and use that host  —  plus their capacity for replication  —  to infect other systems (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Computer Viruses

• Approximately 200 viruses were in circulation by the end of 1990.

• By 2003, the number of viruses in circulation had jumped to 70,000+

• By 2008, viruses numbered over 1,000,000

• By 2010, experts estimated that millions of computer viruses were in circulation around the globe (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Computer Worms

• Like a virus, a computer worm is a self-replicating computer program.

• Unlike a virus, a worm does not need to attach itself to a host to spread to other systems.

• A worm uses a network to send copies of itself to other computers on that network; worms can therefore replicate on their own, without any assistance from computer users (Brenner, 2012).

Cybercrime

Viruses, Worms & Botnet Explained