Cybercrime: What You Need to Know

The three main categories of cybercrime are the cyber-attacks aimed at the people, the government and those attacks aimed at property. In cybercrimes aimed at individuals, the attacker targets a person with the aim of causing disturbance or tarnishing the person’s reputation. Such cases include instances of cyberbullying whereby an attacker uses an electronic device such as a computer to send messages through texts or social media platforms about another person so that people can access and share such information (Blane, 2003) . Such information is negative and false about the targeted person. For instance, disturbing pictures of a person can be exposed on social media without their consent. Stalking is another instance of cybercrime aimed at people. This is whereby a cybercriminal harasses an individual or a group of people by falsely accusing them or tarnishing their reputation. Online attacks aimed at the government mostly cause disruption in the normal activities of the government. An instance of this is hacking of the government database, cyber terrorism and pirated software. A hacker identifies possible shortcomings of the government’s software system and gains access to its data in order to withhold it or to possess such information. Cyber terrorism causes confusion and usually creates fear in citizens for instance, terrorists can post videos of the alleged kidnapped people from the country which may indicate them being tortured. Criminals can as well pirate the government’s software by illegally copying, distributing or using such software for their own benefit. The attacks that are aimed against property include two items which are computers and servers. Denial of service attacks mean that several systems flood the bandwidth of the computer(s) making it unable to run its normal operations. Several computers can be compromised by DOS attacks. Virus transmission by the attacker to the targeted computer or server also interferes with its normal operation. When a computer gets vandalized, it gets damaged through an online process for instance, a cyber-criminal can come up with a malware that destroys the elements of the server and this denies the operator their normal services from the computer. The three attacks can be compared with the fact that all of them are carried out through a cellphone or digital platforms such as a computer. The difference among the three is that attacks aimed at people are meant to destroy a person’s reputation, those aimed at the government disrupts its normal functions and create fear in citizens and property attacks destroy the normal functioning of computers and servers. 

References 

Blane, J. V. (Ed.). (2003). Cybercrime and cyberterrorism: Current issues . Nova Publishers.