Computer criminals

What kinds of people are perpetrating most of the information technology crime? Over 80% may be employees, and the rest are outside users, hackers and crackers, and professional criminals.

Employees: “employees are the ones with the skill, the knowledge, and the access to do bad things”, says Don Parker, an expert on computer security at for SRI international in Menlo Park, California. They‘re the ones, for example, who can most easily plant a ‘logic bomb’. Dishonest or disgruntled employees, he says, pose “a far greater problem than most people realize, the increasing use of laptops of the premises, away from the eyes of supervisors, concerns some security experts, they worry that dishonest employees or outsiders can more easily intercept communications or steal company trade secrets.
Worker may use information technology for personal profit or steal hard or information to sell. They may also use it to seek revenge for real or imagined wrongs, such as being passed over for promotion. Some times they may use the technology. Simply to demonstrate to themselves that they have power over people. This may have been the case with a Georgia printing company employee convicted of sabotaging the firm’s computer system. As files mysteriously disappeared and the system randomly crashed, other workers became so frustrated and enraged that they quit.

Outside users: suppliers and clients may also gain access to a company’s information technology and use it to commit crimes. With both, this becomes more a possibility as electronic connections become more common place.

Hackers and crackers: hackers are people who gain unauthorized access to computer or telecommunication systems for the challenge or even the principle of it. For example, Eric Corley, publisher of a magazine called 2600: the hackers quarterly, believes that hackers are merely engaging in “healthy exploration”. In fact, by they perform a favor and a public service, such unauthorized entries show the corporation’s the leaks in their security systems. Crackers also gain unauthorized access to information technology but do so for malicious purposes. Crackers attempt to break to break into computers and deliberately obtain information for financial gain, shut down hardware, pirate software, or destroy data. The tolerance for “benign explorers” hackers has waned. Most communications systems administrators view any kind of unauthorized access as a threat, and they pursue the offenders vigorously. Educators try to point out to students that universities can’t provide an education for everybody if hacking continues. The most flagrant cases of hacking are met with federal prosecution. A famous instance involved five young New York area men calling themselves the masters of Deception who had broken into numerous information systems.

Professional criminals: members of organized crime rings don’t just steal information technology. They also use it the way that legal businesses do – as a business tool, but for illegal purposes. For instance, databases can be used to keep track of illegal gambling debts and stolen goods. Drug dealers have used pagers as a link to customers. Microcomputers, scanners, and printers can be used to forge checks, immigration papers, passports, and driver’s licenses. Telecommunications can used to transfer funds illegally. As information technology crime has become more sophisticated so have the people charged with preventing it and disciplining its outlaws. Campus administrators are no longer being quite as easy on offenders and are turning them over to police. Industry organizations such as the Software Publishers Association are going after software pirates large and small. Police departments as far apart as Medford, Massachusetts, and San Hose, California, now have police patrolling a “cyber beat”. That is, they cruise online bulletin boards looking for pirated software, stolen trade secrets, child molesters, and child pornography.