CYBER CRIMES AND CYBER LAW

Introduction:
In this era of modern world, there are lot of crimes and laws are their but I
choose Cyber Crime and Cyber law because everybody using computers. The new
millennium of computer world, it is involved every aspect of our lives. From the white
collar criminals to terrorist organization, Teenagers to adult and most important thing is
monetary transactions are moving on the internet. So Cyber crime is an evil having its
origin in the growing dependence on computers in modern life. Cyber-Crime is the latest
and perhaps the most specialized and dynamic field in cyber-laws. So we need to know
what cyber crime is and how cyber law helps us to protect, what are the changes that need
to be done in cyber law to make it more efficient.

Cyber Crime:

cyber crimes, "acts that are punishable by the Information Technology Act"
Which is not covered under Indian Penal Code, cyber crimes, such as email spoofing and
cyber defamation, sending threatening emails, pornography etc, Powerful definition of
cyber crime is "unlawful acts where in the computer is either a tool or a target or
incidental or both".

Computer Crime, E-Crime, Hi-Tech Crime or Electronic Crime is where a computer

is the target of a crime or is the means adopted to commit a crime. Most of these crimes
are not new. Criminals simply invent different ways to undertake standard criminal
activities such as fraud, theft, blackmail, forgery, and cheating using the new medium,
often involving the Internet.

Cyber Ethics:

Cyber ethics is separate from cyber law. Laws are formal written directives
that apply to everyone, interpreted by the judicial system, and enforced by the police.
Ethics is a broad philosophical concept that goes beyond simple right and wrong, and
looks towards "the good life". Ethics and morality in different circumstances may be

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varied. Each and everything which is opposed to public policy, against public welfare and
which may disturb public tranquility may be termed to be immoral and unethical. In the
past terms such as imperialism, colonialism, which were burning issues have given way
to cyber crime, hacking, 'cyber-ethics’. Today in the present era there is a need to evolve
a 'cyber jurisprudence' based on which 'cyber ethics' can be evaluated.

Criminal Law and General Principles:

According to criminal law, certain persons are excluded from criminal

liability for their actions; they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. After
reaching the initial age, there may be levels of responsibility dictated by age and the type
of offense allegedly committed.

"Age of criminal responsibility" in two different ways:

1. As a definition of the process for dealing with alleged offenders, the range of ages
specifies the exemption of a child from the adult system of prosecution and punishment.
Most states develop special juvenile justice systems in parallel to the adult criminal
justice system. Children are unfocused into this system when they have committed what
would have been an offence in an adult.

2. The physical capacity of a child to commit a crime is deemed incapable of committing

some sexual or other acts requiring abilities of a more mature quality. The age of majority
is the doorstep of adulthood as it is idea in law. It is the sequential moment when children
legally assume majority control over their persons and their actions and decisions,
thereby terminating the legal control and legal responsibilities of their parents over and
for them.

But in the cyber world it is not possible to follow these traditional

principles of criminal law to fix liability. Statistics reveal that in the cyber world, most of
the offenders are those who are under the age of majority. Therefore, some other LAW
has to be evolved to deal with cyber criminals.

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CYBER CRIMES AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES:

. According to Donn Parker, “For the first time in human history, computers and
automated processes make it possible to possess, not just commit, a crime. Today,
criminals can pass a complete crime in software from one to another, each improving or
adapting her or his needs.”

The first recorded cyber crime took place in the year 1820. Cyber crime is an evil
having its origin in the growing dependence on computers in modern life. In a day and
age when everything from machinery life to nuclear power plants is being run on
computers, cyber crime has assumed rather threatening implications. Cyber crimes are
really violations of longstanding criminal law, perpetrated through the use of computers
or information networks. The problems of crime using computers will rarely require the
creation of new substantive criminal law. The serious problems posed by attacks against
computers and information systems, such as cruel hacking, spreading of viruses, and
denial of service attacks. Such attacks should be effectively prohibited.

Types of Cyber Crimes:

Following are the crimes can be committed against following groups:

1. Crime against individuals:-

a. Harassment through E mails.
b. Cyber – Stalking.
c. Broadcasting of obscene material.
d. Hacking.
e. Defamation.
2. Crime against Individual Property:-
a. Computer damage.
b. Hacking or Cracking.
c. Unauthorized control over computer system.
d. Transmitting of virus.

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 3. Crime against organization (Government, firm company, Group of
individuals):-
a. Hacking and cracking.
b. Possession of unauthorized information.
c. Cyber terrorism against the government organization.
d. Distribution of pirated software & patent etc.,
4. Crime against society at large:
a. Pornography (especially child pornography).
b. Polluting youth through incident exposure.

Frequently used Cyber Crimes:

 Hacking in simple term means illegal intrusion into a computer system without the
permission of the computer owner or user.

 Denial of Service Attack this is the act by a criminal, who floods the bandwidth of
the victim’s network or fills his e-mail box with spam mail depriving him of the services
he is entitled to access or provide. Denying authorized users the service offered by the
resource. Another variation to a typical denial of service attack is known as a Distributed
Denial of Service attack wherein the perpetrators are many and are geographically
widespread. It is very difficult to control such attacks. The attack is initiated by sending
excessive demands to the victim's computer, exceeding the limit that the victim's servers
can support and making the server’s crash.

 Virus/Worms/Trojan Attack computer virus is a computer program that can infect

other computer programs by modifying them in such a way as to include a copy of it.
Note that a program does not have to perform outright damage (such as deleting or
corrupting files) in order to be called a "virus". Worms unlike Viruses do not need a host
for attachments they make copies of themselves and do this repeatedly hence eating up all
the memory of the computer. Trojans are unauthorized programs which functions from
inside what seems to be an authorized program, thereby concealing what it is actually
doing.

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 Software Piracy theft of software through the illegal copying of genuine programs or
the counterfeiting and distribution of products intended to pass for the original. Retail
revenue losses worldwide are ever increasing due to this Crime.

 Cyber pornography is the threat to the female. This would include pornographic
websites pornographic magazines produced using computers and the Internet download
and transmit pornographic pictures, photos, etc. Internet has provided a medium for the
facilitation of crimes like pornography. Cyber porn as it s popularly called is widespread.
Almost 50% of the web sites exhibit pornographic material on the Internet today.
Pornographic materials can be reproduced more quickly and cheaply on new media like
hard disks, floppy disk, flash drive, pen drive and CD-ROMs. The technology includes
photographs, images, full motion video clips and complete movies are also available.
Disadvantage with a media like this is easy availability and accessibility to children who
can now log on to pornographic web-sites from their own houses. Serious offences which
have universal disapproval like child pornography and far easier for offenders to hide and
propagate through the medium of the internet.

In incident, in Mumbai a Swiss couple would gather slum children and then
would force them to appear for obscene photographs. They would then upload these
photographs to websites specially designed for pedophiles. The Mumbai police arrested
the couple for pornography.

 Email spoofing A spoofed e-mail may be said to be one, The more common method
used by men is to email vulgar photographs of themselves to women, praising their
beauty, and asking them for a date or inquiring how much they charge for ‘services’.
Besides sending explicit messages through e-mail, sms and chat, many also morph
photographs, placing the victim’s face on another, usually nude, body. These things
happen in every city only one in every 500 case is reported. Especially in India cities like
Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai was crossed the danger limit of the crime.

 Morphing is editing the original picture by unauthorized user or fake identity. It was
identified that female’s pictures are downloaded by fake users and again re-posted or
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uploaded on different websites by creating fake profiles after editing it. This amounts to
violation of I.T. Act, 2000 and attracts sections 43 & 66 of the Act. The violator can also
be booked under IPC.

 Cyber stalking is crimes in the modern world. It means "pursuing stealthily". Cyber
stalking involves following a person's movements across the Internet by posting
messages on the bulletin boards frequented by the victim, entering the chat-rooms
frequented by the victim, constantly bombarding the victim with emails etc. Cyber
Stalking mainly occurs with women, who are stalked by men, or children who are stalked
by adult predators or pedophiles. Typically, the cyber stalker's victim is new on the web,
and inexperienced with the rules of Internet safety. Their main targets are the mostly
females, children, emotionally weak or unstable, etc. It is believed that Over 75% of the
victims are female. The motives behind cyber stalking have been divided in to four
reasons, namely, for sexual harassment, for obsession for love, for revenge and hate and
for ego and power trips. The availability of free email and website space, as well as the
anonymity provided by these chat rooms and forums, has contributed to the increase of
cyber stalking as a form of harassment. There position of the cyber stalking in India has
reported in the following cases:

In the case of Manish Kathuria who was recently arrested by the New Delhi
Police. He was stalking an Indian lady, Ms Ritu Kohli by illegally chatting on the Web
site MIRC using her name. He used obscene and abusive language, and distributed her
residence telephone number, inviting people to chat with her on the phone. As a result of
which, Ritu kept getting obscene calls from everywhere, and people promptly talked dirty
with her. Finally, she called the Delhi police and reported the matter. Police traced the
culprit and filed a case under Section 509 of the Indian Penal Code for extreme violation
of others Right the modesty of Ritu Kohli.

 Harassment through e-mails is not a new concept. It is very similar to harassing

through letters. Harassment includes blackmailing, threatening, discrimination, and even
cheating through email. E-harassments are similar to the letter harassment but creates

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problem quite often when posted from fake ids.

 Vulnerability of children and cyber crimes:

In this computer world children are most vulnerable victims as they go through
visually in internet media and get confused. Criminologists have identified the possible
causes of computer crimes as Pedophilic activity; pornographic activity and stalking
activity where it is most likely hood of children being victim. In Pedophilic activity, the
programmer desires to sexually exploit or solicit children for sex through electronic
media. In most of the cases the offender provides identity on the services, giving false
personal information, or changes the same as many times as possible. These service areas
are in the nature of 'Kids Area' and are identified as Teens, Games and Chartroom which
a computer user makes contact with the other side through e- mail; may befriend with
and extract personal information and in gradual process may transmit mail containing sex
information.

In pornography, the service provider, misrepresents this identity and

dispatches a mail to a child user of computer for sending photographs for a carrier of
fashion or modeling, with an offer of incentive or money and sometimes they assure
their victims that such pictures are for personal or confidential use. When they receive
such pictures they interpolate the same through graphic program and convert them to
pornographic pictures such as putting the face of the victim on the nude body of the
person or convert them into intimate postures and release through internet for hacking
by users, without the knowledge of the victim.

Stalkers are individuals who are obsessed and very often intimidate the victims
and provide repeated messages for obtaining answers from them. Once they confirm
access by the victim they follow the victim and harass and later make telephonic contacts
to develop intimacy and if possible sexually exploit them.

In order to avoid identification and to that extent criminal prosecution, the

service provider stipulates conditions of access as to 'Pass word' or download the message

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into a Floppy or pen drive to avoid criminal prosecution and mostly such cyber sexual
crimes are privately done or in such places where privacy is strictly maintained.
Consequently it becomes difficult to find the culprits.

 Financial Crimes today most of us are using credit card, debit card, with these we try
to purchase in online system. Some white collar criminals smartly grab the details our
bank transaction. You simply have to type credit card number into www web page for
online transaction. If electronic transactions are not secured the credit card numbers can
be stolen by the hackers who can misuse this card by impersonating the credit card
owner.

 Cyber Defamation law addresses harm to a person's reputation or good name through
slander and libel. The Internet has made it easier than ever before to broadcast
defamatory statements to a worldwide audience with impunity. For some time, courts
have struggled with remedies for Web defamation. The problem has been magnified by
the difficulty in identifying the perpetrator, and the degree to which Internet Service
Providers should be held accountable for facilitating the defamatory activity.

 Internet Relay Chat servers have chat rooms in which people from anywhere the
world can come together and chat with each other. Criminals use it for meeting co-
conspirators. Hackers use it for discussing their exploits or sharing the techniques.
Pedophiles use chat rooms to attract small children. Cyber stalking is in order to harass a
woman her telephone numbers given to others as if she wants to befriend males.

 Salami Attack in such crime criminals makes insignificant changes in such manner
that such changes would go unnoticed. Criminals make such program that deduct small
amount like Rs. 1.75 per month from the account of all customers of the bank and
deposits same in his account. In these cases no account holder will approach the bank for
such small amount but criminal gains huge amount.

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CYBER TERRORISM:

Cyber crime and cyber terrorism is both crimes of the cyber world. The
difference between the two however is with regard to the motive and the intention of the
performer. While a cyber crime can be described simply as an unlawful act wherein the
computer is either a tool or a target or both, cyber terrorism deserves a more detailed
definition. One can define cyber terrorism as a premeditated use of troublemaking
activities or the threat thereof, in cyber space, with the intention to further social,
ideological, religious, political or similar objectives, or to intimidate any person
objectives. “Is the Internet the new “Wild West?” In the era of globalization: the use
of steganography as a means for communicating the terrorist design online – Red Fort
case, E-mail threats in Taj Mahal Case, Supreme Court E mail Threat Case. The use of
internet to plan and carry out the terrorists’ acts of September 11th – World Trade Center
attack, and recently Mumbai bomb blast reflects the present condition and provides the
answer to the question that “Is the internet the new Wild West?”

Forms of Cyber Terrorism

i. Privacy Violation Right to privacy is a part of the right to life and personal
liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. With the advent of
information technology the traditional concept of right to privacy has taken new
dimensions, which require a different legal outlook. To meet this challenge recourse of
Information Technology Act, 2000 can be taken. The various provisions of the Act
rightly protect the online privacy rights of the citizens. Certain acts have been
categorized as offences and contraventions, which have tendency to encroach with the
privacy rights of the citizens.

ii. Secret information appropriation and data theft The information technology can be
misused for appropriating the valuable Government secrets and data of private
individuals and the Government and its agencies. A computer network owned by the
Government may contain valuable information concerning defense and other top secrets,

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which the Government will not wish to share otherwise. The same can be targeted by the
terrorists to facilitate their activities, including destruction of property.

iii. Network damage and disruptions The main aim of cyber terrorist activities is to
cause networks damage and their disruptions. This activity may divert the attention of the
security agencies for the time being thus giving the terrorists extra time and makes their
task comparatively easier. This process may involve a combination of computer
tampering, virus attacks, hacking, etc.

iv. Distributed denial of services attack The cyber terrorists may also use the method of
distributed denial of services to overburden the Government and its agencies electronic
bases. This is made possible by first infecting several unprotected computers by way of
virus attacks and then taking control of them. Once control is obtained, they can be
manipulated from any locality by the terrorists. These infected computers are then made
to send information or demand in such a large number that the server of the victim
collapses. Further, due to this unnecessary Internet traffic the legitimate traffic is
prohibited from reaching the Government or its agencies computers. This results in
immense pecuniary and strategic loss to the government and its agencies.

CYBER CRIMINALS:

 Kids and Teenagers It seems really difficult to believe but it is true. Most amateur
hackers and cyber criminals are teenagers. To them, who have just begin to understand
what appears to be a lot about computers, it is a matter of pride to have hacked into a
computer system or a website. There is also that little issue of appearing really smart
among friends. These young rebels may also commit cyber crimes without really
knowing that they are doing something wrong.

The increase in number of teenage offenders in cyber crimes are that many of
the offenders who are mainly young college students are unaware of its seriousness. In an
incident the Chennai city police have arrested an engineering college student from Tamil
Nadu for sending unwanted message to a chartered accountant. So it must be educate to
them about the seriousness and consequences of such crimes.

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  Disgruntled Employees One can hardly believe how spiteful displeased employees
can become. Till now they had the option of going on strike against their employers.
Now, with the increase independence on computers and the automation of processes, it is
easier for disgruntled employees to do more harm to their employers by committing
computer related crimes, which can bring entire systems down.

 Professional Hackers Extensive automation has resulted in business organizations

storing all their information in electronic form. Competitor organizations employ hackers
to steal industrial secrets and other information that could be beneficial to them. The
temptation to use professional hackers for industrial surveillance also stems from the fact
that physical presence required to gain access to important documents is rendered
needless if hacking can recover those.

Cyber Crimes and Indian Laws:

India has enacted the first I.T. Act, 2000 based on the UNCIRAL model
recommended by the general assembly of the United Nations by a resolution dated
30th.jan.1997. This Act came into force on 17th October 2000. It has XIII chapters and 94
sections. It shall extend to the whole of India and, save as otherwise provided in this Act, it
applies also to any offence or contravention there under committed outside India by any
person {section 1(2)}. In this ACT section 75 applies to offence or contravention committed
outside India by any person irrespective of his nationality, if such act involves a computer,
computer system or network located in India. IT Act confers Legal recognition of electronic
records and Digital Signatures [section 4, 5 of IT act 2000]. The preamble to this Act gives a
very clean picture in this regard. Chapter XI of this Act deals with offences or crimes along
with certain other provisions spotted in this Acts .The various offences which are provided
under this chapter are:

 Tampering with computer source documents – section 65

 Hacking with computer system – section 66

 Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form – section 67

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 Directions of Controller to a subscriber to extend facilitates to decrypt information

-- Section 69

 Access to protected system – section 70

 Penalty for Breach of confidentiality and privacy – section 72

 Publication for fraudulent purpose – section 74

Cyber Crimes which is punishable under Various Indian laws:

 Sending pornographic or obscene emails are punishable under Section 67 of the IT Act
2000. An offence under this section is punishable on first conviction with imprisonment for a
term, which may extend to five years and with fine, which may extend to one lakh rupees. In
the event of a second or subsequent conviction the recommended punishment is
imprisonment for a term, which may extend to ten years and also with fine which may extend
to two lakh rupees.

 Emails that are defamatory in nature are punishable under Section 500 of the Indian Penal
Code (IPC), which recommends an imprisonment of up to two years or a fine or both.
Threatening emails are punishable under the provisions of the IPC pertaining to criminal
intimidation, insult and annoyance (Chapter XXII), extortion (Chapter XVII).

 Email spoofing is covered under provisions of the IPC relating to fraud, cheating by
personating (Chapter XVII), forgery (Chapter XVIII).

 Sending threatening messages by email – Under section 503 of IPC 1860

 Forgery of electronic records – Under sections 463, 470, 471 of IPC 1860

 Bogus websites, cyber frauds – Under section 420 of IPC 1860

 Email spoofing – Under sections 416, 417, 463 of IPC 1860

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Web-Jacking – Under sections 383 of IPC 1860

Positive Areas of IT ACT 2000:

 Prior to the enactment of the IT Act, 2000 even an e-mail was not accepted under the
prevailing statutes of India as an accepted legal form of communication and as evidence in a
court of law. But the IT Act, 2000 changed this scenario by legal recognition of the electronic
format. In Public Interest Litigation, the Kerala high Court has accepted through an email is
an example.

 In corporate sector, companies shall be able to carry out electronic commerce using the
legal infrastructure provided by the IT Act, 2000. Till the coming into effect of the Indian
Cyber law, the growth of electronic commerce was obstruct in our country basically because
there was no legal infrastructure to regulate commercial transactions online.

 Corporate to have a statutory remedy if any one break into other computer systems or
networks and causes damages or copies data. The remedy provided by the IT Act, 2000 is in
the form of monetary damages, by the way of compensation, not exceeding Rs. 1, 00, 00,000.

 After the implementation of IT act 2000, People who are cheated or affected by cyber
criminals can get remedy through this Act.

Negative Areas of IT ACT 2000:

 Jurisdiction is the highly debatable issue as to the maintainability of any suits which has
been filed. Today with the growing arms of cyberspace the territorial boundaries seems to
vanish thus the concept of territorial jurisdiction as envisaged under S.16 of C.P.C. and S.2.of
the I.P.C. will have to give way to alternative method of dispute resolution.

 Electronic commerce is based on the system of domain names. The IT Act, 2000 does not
even touch the issues relating to domain names. Even domain names have not been defined
and the rights and liabilities of domain name owners do not find any mention in the law.

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 The IT Act, 2000 does not deal with any issues concerning the protection of Intellectual
Property Rights. Contentious yet very important issues concerning online copyrights,
trademarks and patents have been left untouched by the law, thereby leaving many loopholes.

 The IT Act, 2000 has not tackled several vital issues pertaining to e-commerce sphere like
privacy and content regulation to name a few. Privacy issues have not been touched at all.

 The Indian Cyber law relates to its implementation. The IT Act, 2000 does not lay down
parameters for its implementation. Also, when internet penetration in India is extremely low
and government and police officials, in general are not very computer knowledge, the new
Indian cyber law raises more questions than it answers. It seems that the Parliament would be
required to amend the IT Act, 2000 to remove the Negative areas mentioned above.

Issue Faced:

 Awareness: Technology is changing very rapidly. So does the increase in Cyber crimes,
No proper awareness shared with regard to crime and latest tools. People are so ignorant that
makes it effortless for cyber criminals to attack. People fear to report crimes and some crimes
are not properly recorded. Recently a report says only one crime is recorded for every 500
cyber crimes. The reason behind this is that the victim is either scared of police harassment
or wrong media publicity. For minority and marginalised groups who already bear the brunt
of media bias, reporting online harassment to the police may simply draw further unwanted
attention. The public is not aware of the resources and services that law enforcement could
provide them if being a victim of crime or witness.

 Recently China has been manufacturing mobile phones that have cloned IME numbers
which is a current challenge faced in Mobile forensics.

 Global Issues: Most of the IP addresses retrieved during investigation leads to servers or
computers located abroad which have no identity, hence further investigations are blocked
and closed. Correspondence with bodies such as Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail is quite time
consuming and prolong the investigations.

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 Wireless or Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared Issues: Latest wireless technologies which
provide internet connections causes exploitation especially when it is not secured. This is the
present technology terrorists and radical activists exploit. This is another vulnerability that
law enforcement faces.

Above Mentioned are some of the major issues which faced while
implementation of LAW.

Judiciary and IT ACT 2000

 The judicial bodies are not fully aware of Cyber crime and the way in which
investigations are carried out.

 Even though, Cyber law courses available in India, it is difficult to find an experienced
cyber lawyer who is aware of Forensic analysis and technical terms.

 There is no legal procedure for collecting, analyzing and presenting evidence in the court
of law. Hence the defense lawyer can always anticipate an ambiguity.

 It is difficult to convince judicial bodies including judges and the tribunal when evidence
is in a digital format.

Some of the key points to make Efficient:

 A committee of people with knowledge in the field of cyber crime can be appointed to
help judicial bodies.

New amendment should be made by parliament.

 The training and public awareness programs, campaigns should be organized.

More Cyber crime police cells set up across the country.

 Websites aid in creating awareness and encouraging reporting of cyber crime cases.

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 Special Training must be given to forensic investigators and experts.

People should come forward to get secured and benefit of the Act.

Conclusion:

When there is a crime, then there will be a law to protect, like that the
Information Technology act 2000 was enacted when the country was facing the problem
of growing cyber crimes. This is the world computer. Computers stores huge amount of
data in small space and it is easy to access. One of the key elements that keep most
members of society honest is fear of being caught the deterrence factor. It offers the
criminal an opportunity of attacking his victims from the remoteness of a different
continent and the result of the crime are not immediately visible. So we need to come
forward and take some precautions to escape from the criminals even though law &
government protect as in order to prevent cyber crime it is important to educate everyone
and practice safe computing.

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