16-08-2012, 11:46 AM
Cyber Crime and Bangladesh Perspective
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INTRODUCTION
Advent of technology not only widens scientific horizon but also poses constant challenges for the jurisprudence, legal system and legal world as a whole. Computers, Internet and Cyberspace - together known as Information Technology – presents challenges for the law. Challenges, which are not confined, to any single traditional legal category but in almost all established categories of law such as Criminal law, Contract, Tort, as well as legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement etc. Existing legal system and framework has shown inadequacy of law while dealing with Information Technology itself as well as while dealing with the changes induced by the Information Technology in the way of our living. The courts throughout the world have been dealing with these problems. Presently, the law (Statutory or otherwise) providing answers to these problems or dealing with the Information Technology is termed as ‘Computer Laws’ or ‘Information Technology Laws’ or ‘Cyberlaws’.
CONVENTIONAL CRIME
Crime is a social and economic phenomenon and is as old as the human society. Crime is a legal concept and has the sanction of the law. Crime or an offence is “a legal wrong that can be followed by criminal proceedings which may result into punishment.”2 The hallmark of criminality is that, it is breach of the criminal law. Per Lord Atkin “the criminal quality of an act cannot be discovered by reference to any standard but one: is the act prohibited with penal consequences”.
CYBER CRIME
Cyber crime is the latest and perhaps the most complicated problem in the cyber world. “Cyber crime may be said to be those species, of which, genus is the conventional crime, and where either the computer is an object or subject of the conduct constituting crime”. “Any criminal activity that uses a computer either as an instrumentality, target or a means for perpetuating further crimes comes within the ambit of cyber crime”1
A generalized definition of cyber crime may be “ unlawful acts wherein the computer is either a tool or target or both”2. The computer may be used as a tool in the following kinds of activity- financial crimes, sale of illegal articles, pornography, online gambling, intellectual property crime, e-mail spoofing, forgery, cyber defamation, cyber stalking. The computer may however be target for unlawful acts in the following cases- unauthorized access to computer/ computer system/ computer networks, theft of information contained in the electronic form, e-mail bombing, data didling, salami attacks, logic bombs, Trojan attacks, internet time thefts, web jacking, theft of computer system, physically damaging the computer system.
MODE AND MANNER OF COMMITING CYBER CRIME:
1. Unauthorized access to computer systems or networks / Hacking-
This kind of offence is normally referred as hacking in the generic sense. However the framers of the Information and Communication Technology Act, 2006 have no where used this term so to avoid any confusion we would not interchangeably use the word hacking for ‘unauthorized access’ as the latter has wide connotation.
2. Theft of information contained in electronic form-
This includes information stored in computer hard disks, removable storage media etc. Theft may be either by appropriating the data physically or by tampering them through the virtual medium.
3. Email bombing-
This kind of activity refers to sending large numbers of mail to the victim, which may be an individual or a company or even mail servers there by ultimately resulting into crashing.
4. Data diddling-
This kind of an attack involves altering raw data just before a computer processes it and then changing it back after the processing is completed. The electricity board faced similar problem of data diddling while the department was being computerised.
5. Salami attacks-
This kind of crime is normally prevalent in the financial institutions or for the purpose of committing financial crimes. An important feature of this type of offence is that the alteration is so small that it would normally go unnoticed. E.g. the Ziegler case wherein a logic bomb was introduced in the bank’s system, which deducted 10 cents from every account and deposited it in a particular account.
6. Denial of Service attack-
The computer of the victim is flooded with more requests than it can handle which cause it to crash. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is also a type of denial
of service attack, in which the offenders are wide in number and widespread. E.g. Amazon, Yahoo.
7. Virus / worm attacks-
Viruses are programs that attach themselves to a computer or a file and then circulate themselves to other files and to other computers on a network. They usually affect the data on a computer, either by altering or deleting it. Worms, unlike viruses do not need the host to attach themselves to. They merely make functional copies of themselves and do this repeatedly till they eat up all the available space on a computer's memory. E.g. love bug virus, which affected at least 5 % of the computers of the globe. The losses were accounted to be $ 10 million. The world's most famous worm was the Internet worm let loose on the Internet by Robert Morris sometime in 1988. Almost brought development of Internet to a complete halt.
8. Logic bombs-
These are event dependent programs. This implies that these programs are created to do something only when a certain event (known as a trigger event) occurs. E.g. even some viruses may be termed logic bombs because they lie dormant all through the year and become active only on a particular date (like the Chernobyl virus).
9. Trojan attacks-
This term has its origin in the word ‘Trojan horse’. In software field this means an unauthorized programme, which passively gains control over another’s system by representing itself as an authorized programme. The most common form of installing a Trojan is through e-mail. E.g. a Trojan was installed in the computer of a lady film director in the U.S. while chatting. The cyber criminal through the web cam installed in the computer obtained her nude photographs. He further harassed this lady.
10. Internet time thefts-
Normally in these kinds of thefts the Internet surfing hours of the victim are used up by another person. This is done by gaining access to the login ID and the password. E.g. Colonel Bajwa’s case- the Internet hours were used up by any other person. This was perhaps one of the first reported cases related to cyber crime in India. However this case made the police infamous as to their lack of understanding of the nature of cyber crime.