Notorious Cyber Criminals

Hacker is some who seeks an exploit weakness in a computer system or computer network. They will be motivated by multitude of reasons such as profit, protest, or challenge. Nowadays, there are a lot hackers, they are a very diverse bunch  and their portrayal in the media has ranged from the high-tech super spy. In this post will introduce to ten of the most famous hackers.

Black Hat Hackers: who work to exploit computer systems. Some of then do it for fun and curiosity.There are five most famous of black hat hackers
1. Jonathan James: cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth approximately $1.7
2. Adrian Lamo: Dubbed as homeless hacker Broke into New York Times and Microsoft.
3. Kevin Mitnick: The Department of Justices describes him as the most computer criminal in the U.S.,
his exploit detailed into two movies Freedom Downtime and Takedown.
4. Kevin Pulsen: Known as Dark Dante and law enforcement dubbed him as the Hannibal Lacter of computer crime. He hacked into LA radios KIIS-FM phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items.
5. Robert Tappan Morris: Known as the creator of the Morris Worm. He wrote the code for the worm, the first computer worm to be unbleached on the Internet.

White Hat Hackers: Hackers that use their skill for good are classified as "white hat". They work often work as certifid "Ethical Hackers", hired by companies to test their integrity systems.
1. Stepehn Wozniak: is famous for being the "other Steve" of Apple along with current Apple CEO Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple Computer.
2. Tim Berners-Lee: is fame as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the system the we use to access site. documents and files on the internet. He has received numerous recognition, most notably by the Millennium Tecnology Prize.
3. Linus Torvals: the very popular Unix based operating system. He calls himself "an engineer"
4. Richard Stallman: stall-man's fame derives from the GNU project, which he founded develop a free operating system.
5. Tsutomu Shimomura: reach fame in an unfortunate manner. He was hacked by Kevin Mitnick. Following this personal attack, he made it his cause to help the FBI capture him

reference: http://www.itsecurity.com/features/top-10-famous-hackers-042407/

Computer Crimes Act

Today as there has several fraudulent activities been occurred by using a computers as a tool to commit computer crimes, a law needs to be formed to promote a high level of consumer confidence and to protect the information security and network reliability and integrity. Therefore, the first important step that is taken by the government to combat this new type of crime is by introducing a new legal framework to facilitate the development of ICT systems by countering the threats and abuses related to such system called Cyber Laws of Malaysia.

Malaysian legal frameworks

- computer crimes in Malaysia are mainly provided in the Computer Crime  Act 1997, since the Act was intended to be the first specific cyber-crime legislation in the country

- Due to limit scope of the Act compared to the evolving types of computer crimes, not all redresses can be sought to this specific law.
- This where other laws including the conventional laws would cover the remedies. Included in the list are Copyrights Act, Communication and multimedia Act, Panel Code and Internal security Act.

Computer Crimes Act 1997:  One of the main laws that cover computer crimes is the Computer Crimes Act 1997, designed to make criminal offence. It was passed to provide for offences relating to misuse of computers. It addresses unauthorized access, unauthorized modification, and wrongful communication. It prohibits different types of computer related crimes.  

• Within the first category, CCA criminalizes the acts of unauthorized access (section 3), unauthorized modification (section 5) and wrongful communication of access code or passwords (section 6)
• Meanwhile, for the second category that involves other substantially criminal offences, the CCA penalizes the act of unauthorized access that purports to facilitate further offences (section 4)

         Unauthorized Access

• Section 3(1): A person shall be guilty of an offence if (a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer; (b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorized; and (c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case
• The section follows on by stating that a person guilty under this section is liable to a maximum RM 50,000.00 fine or to 5 years imprisonment or to both.
  
  Unauthorized Modification

• Section 5(1): A person shall be guilty of an offence if he does any act which he knows will cause unauthorized modification of the contents of any computer
• The offences under this section are punished with a maximum RM 100,000.00 fine or to 7 years imprisonment or to both. However, if the act is done with further intention of causing 
• injury, it can be punished up to RM 150,000.00 fine or to 10 years imprisonment or both.
  
  Example of unauthorized modification
• Unauthorized alteration, amendment and modification of data
• System intrusion and sabotage
• Website defacing
• System and website destruction
• Spreading virus that may cause data alteration or system destruction.
  
  Wrongful Communication of Means of Access
• Section 6(1): A person shall be guilty of of an offence if he communicates directly or indirectly a number, code, password or other means of access to a computer to any person other than a person to whom he is duly authorized to communicate.
• With this provision, it is clearly an offence for any person to let unauthorized people know any means of access to a computer system (in the form of number, code, PIN, password, etc.) This provision is very important to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of an information and data stored in the computer system. This type of offence is punishable by a maximum RM 25,000.00 fine or a 3 years imprisonment or both.
  
  Computer Crime Act is very essential to be formed in such frauds easily happen. The Act is remaining for combating computer threats that committed by criminals. One more significant to stay away and avoid from bleaches is to be careful ourselves such as do not write down any password in any insecure place. 

Categories of cyber-crime

Last post I stated that cyber-crime can be divided in to three major categories: cyber-crime against persons, property, and government. Within this post material I would like to include its details.

Cyber-crime against persons 
This type of cyber-crime is including transmission of child pornography, harassment, identity theft and cyber stalking with the use of a computer such as email.

Cyber-crime against property It is including unauthorized computer trespassing through cyberspace, computer vandalism , transmission of harmful program, and unauthorized possession of computerized information, hacking and cracking. In addition, creating and dissemination of harmful computer programs as well as software piracy.

Cyber-crime against government  
A distinct example of is cyber-crime terrorism, in which cyberspace is used by individual and groups to threaten government and to terrorize the citizens of a country. This crime may take the form of individuals
"cracking" into government or military maintained web site.

There are commission of computer crimes, as follows
Illegal use of the Internet
- Money laundering
- Pom
- Selling illicit drug
- Propaganda by illegal organisations
- Defamation,slander
- Untrue or false information
- Illegal flesh - traffic
- Illegal gambling
- Copyright violations of Software
- Market manipulation

These are some of commission of computer crimes. Next post I would like to put a material about Computer Crime Act.

Computer Crimes

"Cyber-crime" I believe that most people are very familiar with the word especially people who are used with computer and the Internet. Cyber-crime has become heavily influenced of this rapidly technology changing period. According to Ferrera, et,al "Cyberlaw Teext and Cases" said that cyber-crime is any illegal act that involves a computer, its system, or its application. It is any intentional act associate in anyway with computers where a victim suffered or could have suffered a loss, and a perpetrator made or could have made a gain as well as US. Dept of Justice stated that cyber-crime is any illegal act for which knowledge of computer technology is essential for either its perpetration, investigation, or prosecution. There are another definitions of cyber-crime that was given by Computerdocter Online Dictinary,  Criminal activity committed on the internet. This is a broad term that describes everything from electronic hacking to denial of service attacks that cause electronic commerce sites to lose  money also Thefreedictionary.com, crime committed using a computer and the Internet to steal a person's identity or sell contracted or stalk victims or disrupt operations with malevolent programs. Additionally, in accordance with Technology Support Service said that Crime related to technology, computers and the Internet. To simply conclude its definition is any activities refer to a misdeed involving a computer, its system or its application.

How could a crime be committed ?  
There are several ways for criminals to involve into computer-crimes, They are using computer as a tool for committing a crime, that says; unauthorized access into a computer, making unauthorized changes in data or information, inserting bug or viruses, bombardment of website with junk message, defacing wbsite. The followings are chance method of violation :-
- Fraudulent use of ATMs
- Credit card frauds
- Theft of money from transfer accounts trough manipulation of computer processes
- Frauds committed through internet transactions
- Fake call and the charges are billed to anther customer
- Used to hack into another computer.

Who is committing cyber-crime ? 
Anyone could be committing a computer-crime, bu latest incidents show that computer-crime can be committed by :-
1) Students
2) Members of organized crime syndicates
3) Disenchanted employees
4) Terrorist who gain on their computer proficiency to commit frauds, theft, and terrorism activities.

Types of cyber-crime: cyber-crime can be divided into three major categories; cyber-crime against persons, property and government. According to Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime 2001, cyber-crime is typed into the followings :-
- Offence against the confidentially, integrity and availability of computer data and systems
Computer-related offences
- Content-related offences
- Offences related to infringements of copy right and related rights
- Ancillary liability

Today I would like to finish here, as you can see and read in the last post  I already talked  about common cyber crimes which included in topic of "Danger of Online world".