Computer Crimes on the Internet Essays - Identity Theft, Free Essays

Computer Crimes on the Internet Essays - Identity Theft, Free Essays Computer Crimes on the Internet Alex O'Ree English 101, period 2 Ms. Dougherty April 9.1997 Computer Crimes on the Internet Thesis: Emerging with the Internet, a group of elite cyber-surfers have turned into today's computer hackers. I. Software piracy is a major crime on the Net. A. $7.5 billion of American Software is stolen each year. II. Industrial Espionage is gaining access to remote sites illegally. A. Stealing of information from corporate sites is extremely illegal. B. Password Sniffers are used to get someone's password. C. IP spoofers changes your identity. D. Many things can be stolen from companies. III. Email hacking is common. A. Mail bombs are thousands of messages send to a single address. B. Email forgery can cause people reputations to get ruined. C. Anonymous Email is illegal. IV. Fraud is very common. A. Pyramid schemes are nothing but a scam. B. Credit card fraud is a half billion dollar a year scam. V. Computer viruses are destructive to computers. A. Computer viruses can be attached to Email messages. B. 99% of all computer viruses are detectable. Computer Crimes on the Internet Its the 90's, the dawn of the computer age. With technology changing and evolving everyday, it may seem hard not to slip behind in this ever changing world. The Information Super-Highway has been following computers throughout the past few years. Along with the Internet, an emerging group of elite cyber-surfers have turned into today's computer hackers. Most people don't know about them, most people don't know they exist, but they are out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for there next victim. It can be a scary world out there (Welcome to the Internet). In reality it is not nearly as bad as it sounds, and chances are it won't happen to you. There are many fields of hacking on the Internet. The most popular type of hacking is software piracy. "According to estimates by the US Software Piracy Association, as much as $7.5 billion of American software may be illegally copied and distributed annually worldwide"(Ferrell13). Hackers "pirate" software merely by uploading software bought in a store to the Internet. Uploading is send information from point A(client) to point B(host); downloading is the opposite. Once it is uploaded to the Internet, people all over the world have access to it. From there, hackers trade and distribute the software, which in hacker jargon is warez[AO1]. Industrial Espionage is another main concern on the Internet. Most recently, the FBI's World Wide Web page hacked and turned into a racial hate page. Anyone can access files from a WWW page, but changing them is very hard. That is why most hackers don't even bother with it. CNET stated "This Web site should have been among the safest and most secure in the world, yet late in 1996, it got hacked."(Ferrell18). To change a web page, hackers simply upload a new, modified version of the web page, in place of the original. But fortunately, almost all Internet Service Providers (ISP), the computer you dial to for Internet access, have protection called a firewall, which kicks off all users trying to gain access of change information that are not authorized. "Theft and destruction of company files is increasing faster than the ability to stop it"(Rothfeder170). Another field of hacking on the Internet is Electronic-mail hacking. A hacker can intercept Email enroute and read it with no detection. To safeguard this, companies use encryption programs and no one but the sender and its recipient can read it(Rothfeder225). A mail bomb is another type hack on the Net. "A mail bomb is simply an attack unleashed by dumping hundreds or thousands of Email messages onto a specific address"(Ferrell20). The only way to fix this problem is to either sit there and delete each message one by one, or to call you Internet Service Provider for help. Email forgery is also common. A hacker can change the return address on any given piece of Email to anything they want, such as [emailprotected] This is illegal because you can use someone else's address to send false Email to people. Oracle Systems CEO Larry Ellison fell victim to forgery when a former employee accused him of sexual harassment and used a forged email message to help plead her case. And Bob Rae, the former premier of Ontario, suffered political embarrassment as a result of a