Abstract— A lot of people in the world,mostly Indian have a limited knowledge of the crime occurring in cyberspace,known as cybercrime. Cybercrime happens in the world of computer and theInternet. This kind of crime has a severe impact on our economy, lives andsociety, because our society is becoming an information society, full ofinformation exchange that is happening in cyberspace. Our research work isaimed at knowing the level of awareness of individuals on the existingphenomenon in India, and their impacts on India economy. A survey was carriedout with the aims of getting these results using questionnaire as aninstrument, the responses were quantitatively analysed using some statisticaltechniques. The results show that cracking, software piracy, and pornographyamong others are prevalent crimes in India. While the impacts of these crimeson Indian economy cannot be over emphasized.
Recommendations were proposed onhow these crimes can be minimized if not totally eradicated. Cyber crime,especially in India is growing at the rate of 50% per year and the number ofincidents of cyber crimes is increasing day by day. India ranks fifth in theincidents of cyber crimes in the world.
Keywords— e-crime, cyber crime, internet, computer hacking,pornography, identity loss, hacking, economics impact I. INTRODUCTIONA crime is an offense that may be prosecuted bythe state and punishable by law. A cyber crime is a type ofcrime which uses computers and networks as target orweapon. Today’s necessity is to minimize the cyber crimesoccurring in various parts of the world.
Cyber crimes inIndia are increasing at an alarming rate. It will be betterifthe rate of occurrence of cyber crime patterns is predictedfor various parts of the country.Cyber crime began withdisgruntled employees causing physical damage to thecomputers they worked with, with the aim to get back attheir superiors. As the ability to have personal computersathome became more accessible and popular, cyber criminalsbegan to focus their efforts on home users1. Furtherresearch on this reveals that history of cybercrime wasfurther established that the first published report ofcybercrime occurred in the 1960s, when computers werelarge mainframe systems. Since mainframes were notconnected with other ones and only few people can accessthem, the cybercrimes were always “insider”cybercrimes, which means employment, allowed them to access intomainframe computers, and then refers to as computer crimerather than cybercrime. Actually, in the 1960s and 1970s,the cybercrime, which was “computer crime” infact, wasdifferent from the cybercrime we faced with today, becauseavailability of Internet was restricted within some sections(e.g.
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US military) in that era. In the following decades, theincreasing of computer network and personal computerstransformed “computer crime” into real cybercrime.In fact,the former descriptions were “computer crime”,”computer-related crime” or “crime by computer”.
With thepervasionof digital technology, some new terms like “high-technology” or “information-age” crime wereadded to thedefinition. Since Internet was invented, other new terms,like “cybercrime” and “net” crime becamethe order of theday as people began to exchange information based onnetworks of computers, also keep data in computer ratherthan paper. At the same time, the cybercrime was not onlyrestricted in target cybercrime, but expanded into toolcybercrime and computer incidental. We therefore come toterms with a conclusion on the meaning that cybercrime isan evil having its origin in the growing dependence oncomputers in modern life. A simple yet sturdy definition ofcybercrime would be unlawful acts wherein the computer iseither a tool or a target or both?.
Defining cybercrimes asillegal behaviour directed by means of electronic operationsthat targets the security of computer systems and the dataprocessed by them. Cybercrime in a broader sensecomputer-related crime: any illegal behaviour committed bymeans of, or in relation to, a computer system or network,including such crimes as illegal possession and offering ordistributing information by means of a computer system ornetwork.5Cyber Crime refers to all activities done withcriminal intent in cyberspace. These fall into threecategories:Cyber crime against the persons Cyber Crimesagainst Business and Non-business organizations’ Crimesagainst the government.cyber crime has transformed into a money spinnerbusiness that yields hundreds of millions of dollars andinvolves lesser risk than traditional crimes. Cyber crime,especially in India is growing at the rate of 50% per yearand the number of incidents of cyber crimes is increasingday by day.
India ranks fifth in the incidents of cybercrimesin the worldMeanwhile, in an attempt to uncover these crimesbillions of India is lost through these crimes annually withlittle or no hope of curbing it due to its complex nature.Most perpetrators of this crime are never caught and if atallcaught, are never prosecuted because of lack of concreteevidence, organizational and societal awareness. As a resultthe extent and impact of Cybercrime is uncertain becauselack of reporting leads to uncertainty with regard to theextent and impact of the crime. This is especially relevantwith regard to the involvement of these crimes as comparedto other organized crimes. Available information from thecrime statistics in India is lacking and if any, do notreflect the real extent or impact of this crime in our every-day living. II. LITERATURE REVIEWA.
What is Cybercrime?In the most general form crime can be de-fined as theviolation of law, especially a serious one Cyber crime is anunlawful act wherein the computer is either a tool or targetorboth. Cyber crime consists of specific crime dealing withcomputer and networks and facilitation of traditional crimethrough the use of a computer. Cyber crime uses the uniquefeature of Internet namely the sending of emails, speedypublication of information through the web to any one theplanet.
These criminal activities can often be faster 7A cybercrime is a crime that is committed with thehelp of a computer through a communication device or atransmission media called the cyberspace and globalnetwork called the Internet 2. Cyber crime has beenincreasing in complexity and financial costs sincecorporations, government and individual or society at largestarted utilizing computers in the course of doing business.As technology increases between governments, corporateorganizations and individuals that are involved ininternational and local businesses; criminals have realizedthat this is a cost effective method to make money. Effortsto address Internet crime include activities associated withdefending networks and data, detecting criminal activities,inquiring into crime and taking legal action againstcriminals 3.Cyberspace security is crucial for maintainingthe continuity of these vital services and for preservingthepublic?s trust in information systems. But can this beachieved world-wide? Well, this is a topic for another dayasour focal point in this paper is all about cybercrimes anditsimpact on the Indian economy.
6Some examples of cyber crimes include sendingspam emails (spamming), stealing personal information(identity theft), breaking into someone’s computer to viewor alter data (hacking) and tricking someone into revealingtheir personal information (phishing), making Internetservices unavailable for users (Denial of service –DOS),advanced free fraud 419 (aka Yahoo-yahoo), credit cardfraud (ATM), plagiarism and software piracy, pornography,stealing money bit-by-bit in a cunning way (salami attacks)and virus dissemination etc.So many crimes are committedevery day in the Indian cyberspace. A recent report in theDaily Trust, (2010)by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre,which is a partnership between the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation (FBI) and America’s National White CollarCrime Centre, revealed that India is now ranked third amongthe list of top ten sources of cybercrime in the world with8% behind the US (65%) and the UK (9.9%). 5. WhatIndian government, corporate organizations and the societyat large do not know is that the heavy economic impact onthe country, (either in financial terms or otherwise), willhave an adverse consequences on unemployment rate, socialservices and international reputation.
Therefore, a detailed introduction of cybercrimeneeds to be presented with the view to fully analyze theindices that make up this crime so that our government andsociety will be aware of this crime and its implication ontheeconomy. In this paper, we will introduce the origins andthe evolution of cybercrime, the different categories ofcybercrime (target cybercrime, tool cybercrime andcomputer incidental).The impact of cybercrime has been, and will be inthe future, felt by all governments and economies that areconnected to the Internet. Criminals will use the Internet,computers and other digital devices to facilitate theirillegalactivities as long as the financial gains outweigh theconsequences when caught. Knowing about the quantity ofCybercrime as well as the economic impact is vital for bothgovernments as well as businesses which could be anecessary tool to adjust the legal and regulatory frameworksas well as institutional capacities. Prosecutors and lawenforcement agencies must have resources, training andequipment required to address cybercrime in order to keepcurrent on this newest method of crime fighting. Lack ofreporting this crime leads to uncertainty with regard to theextent and impact.
This is especially relevant with regardtothe involvement of organized crime. Available informationfrom the crime statistics in India, if at all available,does notreflect the real extent of the crime or damages cause as aresult of the crime. Different motivations of private usersand businesses not to report Cybercrime is another concernfor the Government 9.What is known is that the losses caused byCybercrime can be significant. Losses are not only relatedtodirect financial losses but also necessary investments inCyber security and loss of reputation when incidentshappen. It is important to give guidance in this regard e.
g.reporting obligation / establishment of reportingmechanisms (complaint center) 8.B.
Types of Cybercrimes most prevalence in Indian(1) Assault by Threat – threatening a person with fearfor their lives or the lives of their families orpersons whose safety they are responsible for (suchas employees or communities) through the use of acomputer network such as email, videos, or phones.(2) Child pornography – the use of computer networksto create, distribute, or access materials thatsexually exploit underage children.(3) Cyber laundering – electronic transfer of illegally-obtained monies with the goal of hiding its sourceand possibly its destination.(4) Cyber stalking – express or implied physical threatsthat creates fear through the use of computertechnology such as email, phones, text messages,webcams, websites or videos.3(5) Cyber terrorism – premeditated, usually politically-motivated violence committed against civiliansthrough the use of, or with the help of, computertechnology. 9(6) Cyber theft is using a computer to steal. Thisincludes activities related to: breaking and entering,DNS cache poisoning, embezzlement and unlawfulappropriation, espionage, identity theft, fraud,malicious hacking, plagiarism, and piracy.Hardware Hijacking – Researchers at ColumbiaUniversity recently discovered a serious securityflaw in certain printers, as well.
Many printersautomatically update their software when accepting a printjob, connecting to the Internet to downloadthe latest print drivers.Spam – Unsolicited mass e-mail, knowncolloquially as ?spam?, is more than annoying:spam messages can be used to trick people intogiving up sensitive personal information (known as?phishing?), or as carriers for computer worms andviruses. 1Script kiddies-A wannabe hacker. Someone whowants to be a hacker (or thinks they are) but lacksany serious technical expertise. They are usuallyonly able to attack very weakly secured systems.
Insiders- They may only be 20% of the threat, butthey produce 80% of the damage. These attackersare considered to be the highest risk. To makematters worse, as the name suggests, they oftenreside within an organization(7) Yahoo Attack:- Also called 419 because section419 of the Indian criminal code has a law againstsuch offenders. It is characterized by using e-mailaddresses obtained from the Internet access pointsusing e-mail address harvesting applications(webspiders or e-mail extractor). These tools canautomatically retrieve-mail addresses from webpages. Indian fraud letters join the warning ofimpersonation scam with a variation of an advancefee technique in which an e-mail from Indian offersthe recipient the chance to share a percentage of ahuge amount of money that the author, a self-proclaimed government official, is trying to siphonout of the country(8) Salami Attack:-Salami assaults are flamboyanteconomic scams or exploits against confidentialityby comprehensive data gathering.9 III. METHODOLOGY OF THE RESEARCHThe method we employed in this research was the surveymethod while the research design used was the purposiveresearch design technique so as to meet up with the targetedpresentation date.
The survey method was used because ouraims are to get the awareness from users of the computervis-a-viz the Internet and to determine the impacts of thesemenaces on the economy The population of this study is theMathematics Department and Computer ScienceDepartment of Centurian University in order to get theimpacts from the professional while the Computer andInternet users mostly students and Lecturers. A sample sizeof 60 was selected using the random sampling procedurefrom the targeted population of 120. The method used tocollect data for this study is structured questionnaire. Atotalof 60 copies of the questionnaire were personallyadministered out of which 55 copies were retrieved in usableform. This represents a response rate of 91.
6%. 6 IV. CONCLUSION In India, there is no doubt that a good number of peoplehave turned the ethical use of information and communication technologies intounethical activities. This problem is not peculiar to India alone, but it is aproblem world-wide and that is why it becomes imperative that organizationaldata /information must be safeguarded especially these days that almost everybusiness is being run on line. our investigation on cybercrimes we observed itsthreat to the economy of a nation and even peace andsecurity. Therefore there is need for a holistic approach tocombat these crimes in all ramifications.
Our proposaltherefore is the need for cyber police who are to be trainedspecially to handle cybercrimes in India. In addition, thepolice should have a Central Computer Crime ResponseWing to act as an agency to advise the state and otherinvestigative agencies to guide and coordinate computercrime investigation. We are also proposing that the countryshould set up National Computer Crime Resource Centre, abody, which will comprise experts and professionals toestablish rules, regulations and standards of authenticationof each citizen’s records and the staff of establishmentsandrecognized organization, firms, industries etc.Forensicscommission should be established, which will beresponsible for the training of forensics personnel/lawenforcement agencies. Above all, comprehensive law tocombat computer and cyber related crimes should bepromulgated to fight this phenomenon ?to a halt.
Ourproposal on the nature of law to combat cybercrime is notincluded in this paper. We recommend that before anybodyenters into any kind of financial deals with anyone throughthe internet he/she should use any of the search engines toverify the identity of the unknown.
