With more houses, apartments and offices getting Internet ready, Internet crimes are on the rise. Not just the number of crimes, but the complexity of them. For example, senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread Internet attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia -- an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security.
The attack struck hard at networks within U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that oversees U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected computers in combat zones. The attack also penetrated at least one highly protected classified network.
Military computers are regularly beset by outside hackers, computer viruses and worms. But defense officials said the most recent attack involved an intrusive piece of malicious software, or "malware," apparently designed specifically to target military networks.
Internet crime, cybercrime, e-crime, hi-tech crime or electronic crime generally refers to criminal activity where a computer or network is the source, tool, target or place of a crime. These categories are not exclusive and many activities can be characterized as falling in one ore more categories. Internet crime can broadly be defined as criminal activity involving an information technology infrastructure, including illegal access (unauthorized access), illegal interception (by technical means of non-public transmissions of computer data to, from or within a computer system), data interference (unauthorized damaging, deletion, deterioration, alteration or suppression of computer data), systems interference (interfering with the functioning of a computer system by inputting, transmitting, damaging, deleting, deteriorating, altering or suppressing computer data), misuse of devices, forgery (ID theft), and electronic fraud.
Earlier this year, Internet crimesinvolving spam e-mails were focused on by law enforcement and private companies. The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide may even have dropped drastically after a San Jose Web-hosting firm, identified by many in the computer security community as a major host of organizations engaged in spam activity, was taken offline. McColo Co., which computer security experts say serves as a U.S. staging ground for international firms that sell items including counterfeit pharmaceuticals and child pornography, ceased operations after two Internet providers blocked Web access.
