L15: COMPUTER CRIMES

COMPUTER CRIMES
A computer crime is defined as any criminal activity that is related to the use of computers. These activities include computer fraud, copyright infringement, computer theft and computer attack.

COMPUTER FRAUD
Computer fraud is defined as having an intention to take advantage over or causing loss to other people, mainly on monetary basis through the use of computers.

COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
Copyright infringement is defined as a violation of the rights secured by a copyright. Copyright infringement involves illegal copy or reproduction of copyrights material by the black market group. The open commercial sale of pirated item is also illegal.

COMPUTER THEFT
Computer theft is defined as the unauthorised use of another person’s property with the intention to deny the owner the rightful possession of that property or its use.
Examples of computer theft include:
• transfer of payments to the wrong accounts
• tap into data transmission lines on database at no cost
• divert goods to the wrong destination

COMPUTER ATTACK
Computer attack may be defined as any activities taken to disrupt the equipment of computer systems, change processing control or corrupt stored data.
Computer attack can be in the forms of:
• physical attack that disrupt the computer facility or its transmission lines.
• an electronic attack that uses the power of electromagnetic energy to overload computer circuitry.
• a computer network attack that uses a malicious code to exploit a weakness in software, or in the computer security practices of a computer user