Cybercrime

Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime

Robert Moore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317522966
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Criminal Law
• Index: Law

This innovative text provides an excellent introduction to technology-assisted crime and the basics of investigating such crime, from the criminal justice perspective. It presents clear, concise explanations for students and professionals, who need not be technically proficient to find the material easy-to-understand and practical. The book begins by identifying and defining the most prevalent and emerging high-technology crimes — and exploring their history, their original methods of commission, and their current methods of commission. Then it delineates the requisite procedural issues associated with investigating technology-assisted crime. In addition, the text provides a basic introduction to computer forensics, explores legal issues in the admission of digital evidence, and then examines the future of high-technology crime, including legal responses.

Chapter 1
An Introduction to High-Technology Crime

When discussing crimes that involve computers and technology it is possible that prior to this reading the term high-technology crime may not have been heard by the reader. The term technology is often used to refer to mechanical or electrical devices that assist individuals in their day-to-day activities, but what does it mean to discuss high technology? As this is a work designed for those who are either interested in or currently involved in the field of criminal justice, let us take the standard equipment of a law enforcement officer as an example. Today, most all law enforcement personnel carry a firearm of some type, regardless of whether they elect to utilize a revolver or a semi-automatic. Is the officer’s firearm a piece of technology? Of course. The firearm is a highly mechanical device, with the revolver having been developed by Samuel Colt in 1836. Therefore, the firearm is a piece of technology and one that has been around for more than a 100 years. Now, is the firearm a piece of high technology? This could be debatable, as some would consider the complex designs and manufacturing components of the firearm to make it a highly sophisticated piece of technology. But does being highly sophisticated equate to being considered high technology? Probably not. In the eyes of this author, the term high technology invokes images of highly developed electronic devices—more in line with the components that make up a cellular telephone than the components of a firearm.

It is worth noting that for many people what they consider to be a computer—the large electronic device that we type our research papers on and use to browse the Internet—is not the limitation for the technology. A computer is an electronic device that allows the user to input information, process that information, and then receive results that are based on the information provided by the user. Many of these devices do not come with monitors or keyboards. For example, many of us now commonly use a debit card at the local convenience store, thereby saving us the time and effort it takes to write out a check. To complete our financial transactions, the cashier merely takes our debit card and swipes the magnetic strip through a small machine, returning our card to us when he or she is finished. The small device attached to the cashier’s cash register will obtain our account number from the magnetic strip on the back of the debit card. We as users then enter our PIN onto the keypad, and the transaction is either approved or rejected. The machine that reads our debit cards is a miniature computer. Furthermore, the debit card scanner would meet our earlier established criteria for being considered an example of a high-technology device. Another example of technological devices seeing increased use in our society would be cellular telephones. In the five years since the first edition of this text was published, a number of cellular phone manufacturers continue to release phones containing increasingly advanced software applications. Today’s cellular phone can allow users from around the world to input information, process information, and send or receive information almost instantaneously. Each of these devices is a highly sophisticated electronic device that would therefore meet the previously discussed definition of a high-technology device. Now that we have a basic understanding of some examples of high-technology devices, questions that remain involve gaining a better understanding of high-technology crime and determining whether such criminal behavior is a serious problem that truly warrants examination and consideration.

What Is High-Technology Crime?

In keeping with the definition of high technology previously noted, high-technology crime refers to any crime involving the use of high-technology devices in its commission. These are crimes that involve the use of computers, telephones, check-reading machines, credit card machines, and any other device that meets the previous definition of high technology. There are numerous forms of high-technology crime, ranging from traditional crimes committed prior to technological advances, to newer crimes that rely on high-technology devices to commit crimes. In the past, there have been several different ways of referring to crimes involving high-technology devices. Perhaps the two best-known classifications used to distinguish these crimes are computer crimes or cybercrimes.

Computer Crimes

Traditionally, the term computer crime has been used to refer to criminal activities involving a computer that are made illegal through statute. The definition espoused by Eoghan Casey, one of the most well-known researchers in the area of computer-related crime, is used here because of the clarity of his focus. Accordingly, a computer crime would be a crime that involves a computer in one of the following ways:

• The computer as an instrument of the crime. Here, the computer is used as a means of engaging in the criminal activity. Under this category, the crime cannot be committed without the computer being turned on and used in the commission of the act. An example here would be the individual who uses a company computer to embezzle funds from a company account.
• The computer as the focus of a crime. Here, the computer is the intended target of criminal activity and is not necessarily used in the commission of the act. The best example of this is the individual who breaks into a computer supply store after hours with the intention of stealing computers and computer peripheral equipment.
• The computer as a repository of evidence. Here, the individual involved in a criminal act has not stolen the computer and has not used the computer as a means of committing the criminal act, but he or she has stored evidence on the machine. A good example of this is the individual who stores his or her illegally copied music files on his or her home computer. Note then that for this category to be applicable, the storage computer could not have been involved in the criminal activity. However, the generalizations are of minor concern because regardless of which category or categories the individual’s actions fall under, she or he is still guilty of a computer crime under this definition.

This definition is a good means of addressing criminal activities that involve computer technology. Let us examine one of the more famous and commonly read about computer crimes: hacking. Hacking refers to the unauthorized access of another person’s computer, and would be considered a computer crime under the preceding definition for several reasons. First, the crime involves a computer that was used as an instrument of the crime. To be guilty of hacking, one must actually type in commands to penetrate the security of a second computer. Second, both computers will probably maintain some form(s) of evidence that could be used to confirm the identity of the hackers. As such, computers involved in hacking would meet the third definition above, whereby computers are repositories of evidence related to a crime—in this case, the crime of hacking into the target computer.

Cybercrime

Cybercrime, returning to a definition provided by Casey, refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network, where a computer may or may not have played an instrumental part in the commission of the crime. The term cybercrime would be used to refer to a criminal act like that of identity theft, which involves the theft of someone’s personal information such as their credit card number or Social Security number. When an individual commits the crime of identity theft, there are several methods of obtaining a target’s personal information. Many of the techniques involve the use of a computer or a network, but many more techniques have nothing to do with computers other than information stored in text files on a computer’s hard drive.

In reading the discussion above it becomes clear that the term cyber-crime actually refers to computer-related crime; however, some consider computer crime to be a subdivision of cybercrime that warrants its own definition and understanding. The determining factor between the two appears to be little more than the issue of whether a statute is present to criminalize the use of the computer in the criminal act. Because of the fact that more crimes today are relying on the Internet, there has been a significant effort by legislators to expressly criminalize these acts in the statutes. For example, as recently as 10 years ago, many states did not criminalize online harassment. Apparently, the reigning thought at the time was that harassment via the computer did not have the necessary psychological or physical impact necessary to show harm to an individual. Legislators and criminal justice professionals today are beginning to understand the dangers of such crimes. Prior to the enactment of these statutes, individuals guilty of harassing someone over the Internet were prosecuted under other statutes that were, for lack of a better term, “stretched out” to include the crime under investigation. Now that more of the crimes are being made illegal through express statutes, the question arises as to whether there is a need to differentiate between the two forms of crime. Should computer crime be considered separately from cybercrime? After all, over the last five years the term cybercrime has superseded that of computer crime. A quick search for book and journal articles on the topic of cybercrime versus the topic of computer crime would result in a confusing number of articles as more researchers and professionals are utilizing the term cybercrime as an umbrella term for all crime involving computers and technology.

Consolidating High-Technology Crimes

It could be argued that criminal behavior is criminal behavior regardless of the terminology used to describe the behavior. Therefore, a strong argument could be made that the distinction between a computer crime and a cybercrime is trivial. Both activities are crimes, and both activities involve technology in the commission of the acts. The majority of hacking attacks, with hacking being the most historically well known of computer crimes, are now reliant on the Internet and network connections. Because of this fact, the definition of a computer crime is now beginning to blur into the definition of a cybercrime—being that the worldwide network, the Internet, is now involved in many criminal activities that rely on computer technology.

In this work, I hope to provide information on several crimes that may involve only limited influence of computers and networks, as well as acts that rely almost entirely on the use of a computer and a network. These crimes most often involve highly developed technology in the commission of the crime, and as such the term high-technology crime is utilized for the purposes of this work. By utilizing this term I am referring to criminal activities that may have at one time been considered a computer crime or a cybercrime, with some of the crimes being considered a combination of both. Semantics regarding whether the act is a computer crime versus a cybercrime versus a high-technology crime is not important. Gaining a better understanding of the problem and the need to develop a strong response is more important.

How Serious Is the High-Technology Crime Problem?

With the term high-technology crime we are now referring to many diverse criminal activities such as hacking, digital child pornography, identity theft, intellectual property theft, and online fraud. The rate of each of these crimes has been steadily increasing in recent years and, when examined as a whole, amounts to a very serious problem. It should also be noted that the problem is not isolated to the United States. Problems associated with high-technology crimes have become increasingly more discussed in every country around the world—even in countries not known for their high levels of technological development and skill. Technology has played a key role in globalization, but this shrinking of the world has also led to many difficulties in terms of criminal activity. The worldwide nature of high-technology crime has developed problems involving such considerations as jurisdiction. In some cases it is now very difficult to determine who has the authority to investigate a high-technology crime. For example, an individual living in Russia is capable of transmitting an image of child pornography here to the United States. In this situation, who has jurisdiction? Russia? Perhaps under Russian law the young girl in the picture was of legal consenting age. Was there then a crime committed in the eyes of Russian law enforcement personnel? Does the United States have jurisdiction? It is illegal to transmit images of juveniles, but the individual never touched U.S. soil when committing the criminal act. Can the use of American telephone lines be considered when examining whether there is jurisdiction for an investigation? These are all important questions that are not easily answered. There is, however, an increasing level of debate and intelligent discussion among world leaders as more international entities are coming to recognize the dangers of high-technology crimes.

The increasing frequency of the crimes alone is enough to justify a certain level of concern. According to data released by the Internet Crime Complaint Center, complaints of fraud and attempted network intrusions were up 33.1 percent for the year 2008 compared with data from 2007. Many of these reported cases involved online fraud, with the median loss being $931.00 per complainant. For further proof of the problem, one has to look no further than his or her local or national newspapers. It seems that rarely a week goes by without there being a report of some form of high technology−related crime happening around the country. Many of these reports concern credit card accounts being hacked or a new computer virus being released. The release of computer viruses and the constant need to prevent unauthorized access to vital information has led some companies to hire individuals whose sole job is writing anti-virus software programs or defending computer networks against outside attackers.

While hacking was historically the most recognized high-technology crime, it is not the only crime seeing increased reporting and prosecution. Digital child pornography, to be discussed more fully in Chapter 4, is unfortunately increasing. Child pornography is a troubling crime if for no other reason than the fact that children are sexually abused in the manufacturing of the materials. According to one federal law enforcement official, as much as 50 percent of all cases involving computers and technology are child pornography cases. Some state law enforcement agencies put the numbers as high as 75 percent, meaning that three out of four high-technology crimes involve the manufacture, distribution, or possession of child pornography. This becomes especially important when one considers that increasingly more states are being asked to handle their own high-technology crime investigations as the federal government shifts its focus to other areas of criminal jurisdiction.

Another high-technology crime that has seen a dramatic increase in reporting is identity theft or online fraud. According to information provided by Equifax, one of the leading credit reporting agencies in the United States, identity theft has affected more than 27 million Americans over the last 5 to 6 years. These figures are even more astounding when one considers that many individuals do not report their victimization because they either do not understand the crime or do not realize that they have been victimized until they go to apply for credit. Identity theft is perhaps such an attractive crime because it is possible to commit the crime and move on before the victim even realizes he or she has been victimized.

The frequency of high-technology crime is also presenting a problem for law enforcement personnel because of the need for training and equipment. While recognition and response to the problem is better today than it was 10 years ago, there are still many law enforcement agencies that face the same problem year after year—a budget shortfall. The budgetary issues are especially problematic for smaller police and sheriff’s departments in rural communities. Criminals may retreat to these smaller communities when they want to get away from the larger cities in ho...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 An Introduction to High-Technology Crime
• Chapter 2 Hackers, Crackers, and Phone Phreaks
• Chapter 3 Identity Theft: Tools and Techniques of 21st-Century Bandits
• Chapter 4 Digital Child Pornography and the Abuse of Children in Cyberspace
• Chapter 5 Financial Fraud and Con Artistry on the Internet
• Chapter 6 Online Harassment and Cyberstalking
• Chapter 7 Intellectual Property Theft and Digital File Sharing
• Chapter 8 Investigating on the Web: Examining Online Investigations and Sting Operations
• Chapter 9 Seizure of Digital Evidence
• Chapter 10 Executing a Search Warrant for Digital Evidence
• Chapter 11 An Introduction to Computer Forensics
• Chapter 12 The Future of High-Technology Crime
• Chapter 13 An Introduction to Cybercriminology: What is Cybercriminology
• Bibliography
• About the Author
• Index