Research Paper on Cyber Crimes and Security Measures

The connectivity of a computer to other of networks that allows communication with other computers presents many risks to the computer. According to Kallol Bagchi, (2003), internet security involves mechanisms and procedures taken to protect and secure files and data in the computer connected to the internet against intrusion by other internet users. The internet being insecure mediums of exchanging information presents high-risk attacks which results in loss of data or files, destruction of computer software or access of information by unwanted or unknown computer users. To protect the transfer of date via internet several methods such as encryption have been employed. (p. 686)

History of internet security

According to Gollmann, since the evolution if the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1995, experts predicted that by the year 2000 internet will be accessed by at least 200 million users. Latest data from US census bureau show that as of June 2010 at least 2 billion people visit the internet daily.

There has been a tremendous change over the past in the usage of internets. There has been increase exchange of data, electronic business and the world is now a global village. Networks have become cheaper, and computers and mobile phone are more powerful to access internet connectivity. Computer crime has since emerged (Gollmann, 2010 p. 548).

In 1995, when www emerged and became the easiest and fastest browsing tool, police in Hong Gong had to disconnect all except one Internet Service providers (ISPs) in search for a hacker. Over 20, 000 internet users were affected.

Since then, Internet Security has become a real concern as cyber crimes have increased. As the number of internets users swell daily, internet security continues to elicit security issues.

Types of cyber crimes

Hacked advertising

A hacker is computer user with knowledge and expertise in computers and networking whose intention is to get unauthorized or illegal access to a computer system. Hacked advertising is where internet criminal access an originations websites and illegally modify information thereon. Some even go ahead and send malicious emails using the email accounts. The first serious crime of this kind occurred on December 29 1996, when a hacker accessed US Air Force and replaced the cover page with a pornographic picture.

Industrial military espionage

This is hacking into websites hosts in order to steal and tamper with confidential data. This included stealing identity, destruction or corrupting of files. Once the data is tampered with, the organization without realizing will continue to use and reproduce faulty ones. This costly incident can occur to an organization. For example, in 1997, two university student hackers got their way into Boeing’s computers. They managed to access the courthouse systems in Seattle, which cost Boeing $ 57000 to check the integrity of their system.

Fraud

The emergence E-commerce and electronic money led to more challenges in making transactions. Credit card security has been one of the biggest concerns since the emergence of online commerce has created a big opportunities for fraudsters. Virtual shops that serve the online client use credit card as a form of payment. In this case the customer send the credit card number to the virtual shop so as to enable him debit the amount required to pay for the purchased goods. The information can be hacked without the knowledge of either of the two parties. While growth of E-commerce has been robust, it is also becoming a large concern for credit card customer and organizations.

Systems disabling

This is where hackers attack ISP’s service stations this disabling all their services. The service may not be destroyed bust they get impaired, crashed, or exhaust memory rendering is operational. During the time it is not functioned, the company loose money and sometimes data may be lost.

Other crimes include pornography, crime network syndicate such as piracy, terrorism, and kidnapping.

How do hackers work?

The flaws of the networks create different opportunities for hackers. They use different methods to achieve their goals. Like hackers, crackers breaks into systems, wipes all memories, crash machines or stop running processes. The following are ways or tools used by hacker and crackers in cyber crimes.

Social engineering

This where crackers use social network such as twitter, Facebook, yahoo mails, etc to trick people to reveal their passwords or other information that put a system security at a risk or compromise. These could include posing as client or employee with an urgent need of technical support. Common nowadays are emails from hacked accounts with enticing messages such need for business partnerships, donation, and grants.

Password cracking

Passwords are the first defense lines against any possible attack on to a system. Passwords cracking involve hackers and cracker attempting to gain access by breaking this line. They use programs that generate millions of possible passwords from a given users, domain, or emails address.

Packet and password sniffing

If the hacker cannot access the passwords by guessing them, they use password-sniffing tools, which involve use of broadcast technology, where the hacker scrutinizes the network transmissions read by other networks. The sniffing tools are programs that look at every message on the network and attempt to sniff the sender or recipient’s network access details.

IP spoofing

This is where internet criminals use IP source routing by pretending as a genuine host or client hence obtaining authorize information for accessing hosting servers. Another spoofing method is where the hacker will wait until a client computer is turned off and then attempting to impersonate the clients’ systems to access the internet host. Prone to spoofing is emails that do not have electronic signatures.

Trojan Horses

This is program that hides itself in another so that when the actual program is run, the hidden Trojan is also run. When the Trojan run it maliciously could destroy files or send out signals to the attacker thus allowing them direct access who then can modify programs or install other destructive programs.

Worms

This is a program that replicates itself without being triggered by other programs or by any person. An example is a worm created by a student, which within 8 hours, over 2000 computers had been infected and began to hut down because the replication of the programs was very fast for deletion. Though nowadays rare, hackers still use worms as a technique to attack operating systems.

Viruses

According to Kaspersky, viruses are programs that deliberately written that alter how computers operate, without the permission or knowledge of the user. They damage program, reformats storage programs or deletes files.

Kaspersky’s, one of the companies dealing internet security services and products collected data in 2009 about IT products most vulnerable to attacks. The graph below is the presentation of data on which Kaspersky’s products contained the most vulnerability

Source: Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2009. Statistics, 2009 (http://www.securelist.com/en/images/vlill/ksb09_malware2_pic02.png)

There are a plenty of programs or methods used by hacker and crackers to launch attacks, posing the challenge of internet security. Other methods include NIS/NFS attacks; send mail attacks, TCB-SYN flooding, FTP attacks, and so many others.

The graph below shows data on the most common vulnerabilities were classified by type:

Source: Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2009. Statistics, 2009 (http://www.securelist.com/en/images/vlill/ksb09_malware2_pic02.png)

In 2009, the International Decision Systems in Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 deflected 219,899,678 network attacks as tabulated below. Similar data of 2008 was slightly more than 30 million.

Source: Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2009. Statistics, 2009 (http://www.securelist.com/en/images/vlill/ksb09_malware2_pic02.png)

Methods of enhancing internet security

There three main methods of enhancing internet security: password protection, encryption and firewalls.

Firewalls

A firewall is a type of a controlled access technology that restricts access of information and resources by placing a barricade or a ‘wall’ between an unsecured networks and an organizations network. It prevents any illegal or unauthorized import or export of information from and to a corporate network. Some of the most common firewall in current market include: McAfee Personal Firewall Plus, Norton Personal Firewall, ZoneAlarm ProSymantic, and BlackICE PC Protection. (Cheswick, Bellovin, & Rubin, 2003 p.9)

Firewall compares the request from the devise on side with information on the devise in the others side. Firewalls are essentially a set of rules, thus the sets of information in the internet that of the external are compared against each fire rule. Only those that correspond to the rules will cross the fire wall. They are configured to secure networks against unauthorized logins thus preventing possible data vandals. They allow internal users to communicate freely to the outside but restrict traffics coming in the networks. (Cheswick, Bellovin, & Rubin, 2003 p.14)

However, firewalls are not able to protect the networks or data against attacks that cross the wall. For this reason, experts advise against corporations hosting very confidential data on the internet. Such data do not require firewalls. Firewalls also may not protect against attacks from worms and viruses.

Protecting Passwords and generating safe passwords

Enhancing the safety of password is one way of enhancing internet security. Generating safe passwords and shadow passwords are the two main methods for this. Shadow passwords are where the plain text of the password remains hidden from the user except the root. Generating safe passwords is where users are encouraged to avid too easily to guess passwords. Effective ones are easy to remember but difficult to guess or greater using computer programs. (Great Britain: Parliament: House of Lords: Science and Technology Committee, 2007 p. 150-153)

Encryption

This is a cryptographic method of using technology so that shared date is only understood by the removing client’s computers. The process involves encrypting and decrypting. This improves traffic flaws end minimizes insecurity vulnerability. Encryption can be symmetrical pr asymmetrical. Asymmetric (key) encryption uses two methods at the same time: a public key known to everyone and a private known only to the recipient of the message. The public key encrypts the message while the private or secret key decrypts the message. Knowing the public key does not make possible to know the private key (Sinrod & Reilly, 2000 p.18).

Symmetric encryption is where the same key is applied in encryption and decryption of the access keys.

Conclusion

The need for internet security and sharp rise in cyber crime is the recent concern for businesses. Legislations have been enacted to apprehend and prosecute suspect of this crime.

References

1. Cheswick W. R., Bellovin S.M., & Rubin A.D. (2003). Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker. Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional
2. Gollmann, D. (2010), Computer security. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Computational Statistics, 2: 544–554. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wics.106/full>
3. Great Britain: Parliament: House of Lords: Science and Technology Committee (2007). Personal internet security: 5th report of session 2006-07, Vol. 2: Evidence. London: The Stationery Office Publishers.
4. ICANN, (September 2010) Plan For Enhancing Internet Security, Stability, And Resiliency (Fy 11)

<http://www.icann.org/en/topics/ssr/ssr-draft-plan-fy11-13sep10-en.pdf>

5. Kallol Bagchi, (2003). An Analysis Of The Growth Of Computer And Internet Security Breaches- Journal of Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 12,) 684-700
6. Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2009. Statistics, 2009 (http://www.securelist.com/en/images/vlill/ksb09_malware2_pic02.png)
7. Sinrod E. J. & Reilly W.P., (2000) Cyber-crimes: A Practical Approach to the Application of Federal Computer Crime Law. Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal May, 2000