Cyber Criminals

9 Pages 2146 Words

or is sent with the intent to harass the recipient is illegal. Another form of computerized crime is hacking; hacking is when a cyber criminal, also known as a hacker, breaks into another persons computer, or gains unauthorized access to a website. Any unauthorized access to password-protected files, areas, or personal information is considered hacking and is illegal. The easiest, and probably the most common form of computerized crime is Pirating software, which is simply making an illegitimate, illegal copy of a program. Five years ago, pirating software would have taken a lot of knowledge, and some expensive computer equipment to accomplish. But thanks to new-age technology, software can easily be copied with the use of a very common tool, the CD-RW drive. All that a “Software Pirate” has to do to make an illegal “pirated” copy of a CD is place a legitimate copy of the desired CD in the CD-Rom drive. Next, he/she places a writable CD in the CD-RW drive, clicks a few buttons, and within a matter of minutes they have a copy of the original CD that a computer cannot usually distinguish from the legal copy.
The Fifth form of computerized crime is the virus. Creating viruses is perfectly legal, but most viruses that are created are used for the illegal purpose of damaging another’s computer. A virus is nothing more than a piece of software that attaches to a pre-existing program on the victims computer. When each time the infected program is ran, the virus is also ran, where it can do its designed function and reproduce itself. There are 3 main types of virus- the e-mail virus, the worm, and the Trojan horse.-“viruses”
E-mail virus-An e-mail virus is simply a virus that moves around in e-mail messages. They usually replicate themselves my automatically mailing itself to everyone in the victims address book.
Worms-“A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. ...