The new era of Cybercrime
The ability to cause harm to systems, networks, and users is only a manner of reworking traditional crimes and misdemeanors by using Internet technologies and the setting of today’s digital age. Actions that perpetrate crimes in cyberspace are termed cybercrime.
Cybercrime is no longer confined to sporadic incidents of unauthorized access or hacking events. It has continually redefined itself to manifest itself in newer forms. In 1983, a group of experts of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defined the term “cybercrime” (or “computer-related crime”) as “any illegal, unethical, or unauthorized behavior involving automatic data processing and/or transmission of data”.
Later studies went even further in developing broader concepts on “data and/or information crime”.13 As increasing incidents of cybercrime took center stage, so did the need to define it to regulate it. Hence, many definitions of cybercrime have been coined.
In Australia, for instance, cybercrime has a narrow statutory meaning as used in the Cybercrime Act 2001 (Cwlth), which details offenses against computer data and systems. However, a broad meaning is given to cybercrime at an international level. At the European Council’s Convention on Cybercrime, “cybercrime protection” is used as an umbrella term to refer to an array of criminal activities, including offenses against computer data and systems, computer-related offenses, content offenses, and copyright offenses. Also used are a number of inter-related terms such as “computer crime”, “internet crime”, “e-crime”, and “computer-related crime”.
However, the scope of this chapter is to examine cybercrime as simply a new-age crime, a crime that only requires basic technical knowledge and two readily available weapons: a computer and the Internet. Cybercrime includes traditional crimes such as theft (“upgraded” for the digital age) or newer crimes such as data diddling, as long as the means used include a computer connected to the Internet. The new era of cybercrime needs new era of cyber protection.
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Dimitri
