Deep Web

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662&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=deep+web&oq=deep+we&gs_l=img.3.0.0l10.255792.256715.0.25797
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The Internet is an interesting space. It is very enormous, beyond our imagination, and almost impossible have its size estimated. Renowned websites such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia, occupy only less than 1% of the Internet (Pagliery, 2014). Therefore people call the scarcely used part of the internet as deep web (dark web), just like the water beneath the ocean surface. The term ‘deep web’ is created in 1995, when a teenager called Ian Clarke invented a software by which people can anonymously browse, chat, and share files online, and that the IP address cannot be tracked. The software was publicly released in 2000 as Freenet (Beckett, 2009).There were at least 2 millions downloads in 2009, from Freenet’s official site. The number of users shall be a lot more as it can be shared through other means. On Freenet, there are loads of ‘freesites’ available for users. However, the majority of them are illegal and inhuman, which contains content like child porn, drugs, viruses sharing, terrorism, criminal contacts etc. 

Disgraceful activities on the Internet are common. Some users film psycho videos and share them on the net, and there may be some parody works posted based on the video. People could ask for a killer for $400 USD in Mexico (Waugh, 2015). Virtual currencies such as Bitcoin are used as a currency instead of British pound or US dollar for anonymity (and there is no related regulation control). Deep web is just like a black market. It joints people together in doing illegal activities, despite surveillance by the government. There was once a shutdown of 400 deep web sites supporting serious organised crime, as Troels Oerting, the head of Europol's European cybercrime centre, mentioned (as cited in Wakefield, 2014). 

Given the fact that so many crimes (mostly are drugs and child abuses) are committed by deep web users, the UK government has created a new department in the beginning of November called Joint Operations Cell (JOC), which is operated by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and UK Intelligence outfit GCHQ (Osborne, 2015). To help JOC in its running, the government has granted £50 million for child protection. 

Although the deep web sounds like a toxic, providing opportunities for people to commit crimes ‘silently’, it could be still be deemed as an opportunity for which governments may go undercover as criminals for easy carrying out of investigation and acquiring confidential documents. Journalists may also get insider information for the common good via deep web.  There is still an imperative that a high privacy level has to be existed without interference with corporations and dictatorships.

References:  

Beckett, A. (2009). The Dark Side of the Internet. The Guardian. [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Osborne, C. (2015). UK Gov't Tackles Dark Web with New Cybercrime Unit. [online] ZDNet. Available at: http://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-govt-tackles-dark-web-with-new-cybercrime-unit/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Pagliery, J. (2014). The Deep Web You Don't Know about. CNN. [online] Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/10/technology/deep-web/index.html [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Wakefield, J. (2014). Huge Raid to Shut Down 400-plus Dark Net Sites. BBC. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29950946 [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Waugh, R. (2015). 12 Scary Things Which Happen When You Go on the ‘Dark Web’. Metro. [online] Available at: http://metro.co.uk/2015/07/08/12-scary-things-which-happen-when-you-go-on-the-dark-web-5285640/ [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

How Cyber Crime Affects Business

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Cyber crimes are a threat that is common and hard to be avoided. They can affect daily life of individuals, the normal operation of institutes and companies, as well as that of the government. Cyber crimes can cause direct or indirect consequences, sometimes both. Directly, cyber crimes can cause downtime of the whole computer system and data to be stolen. Indirectly, because of the confidential data are stolen, a company can lose its tender. Organisations pay lots of money to deal with cyber crimes. The humanity pays around $445 billion (that is £294 billion) a year to deal with cyber crimes (Ashford, 2015), in which £21 billion is paid by the UK, which is a substantial amount (The Cost of Cyber Crime, 2011).

While cyber criminals have different preferences in their approaches, some approaches are more favoured. IP thefts cost the UK £9.2 billion every year, that is almost one half of the amount for dealing with all cyber crimes (Baines, 2013). IP theft does not mean stealing IP (Internet Protocol) addresses but intellectual property. Some industries are more likely to suffer from IP thefts, for example, pharmaceuticals and biotech, electrons and electrical equipment, software and computer servers, are among the top 3. IP thieves usually target victims according to market value, for example, amount of tenders and transactions, valuable goods and material etc. 

Industrial espionage comes second after IP thefts. In this crime, intellectual property is not the only target, but also information such as customer details, pricing decisions and trade secrets, which are usually not revealed to outsiders. This crime does not necessarily require the Internet or malicious softwares to be committed. It can also be committed in person. Plug the USB and copy the files in unattended computers, as simple as doing warm-up on your fingers. 

Cyber crimes come in many different forms. It is very difficult to deal with the problem of cyber crime, but the government and the business sector can cooperate and contribute what they each can give to alleviate the problem. In particular, the business can lower the risk of being a victim of cyber crime through enhancing the employees’ awareness to cyber traps and setting a strict password for important documents etc. 

References:

Ashford, W. (2015). Cyber Crime: What Every Business Needs to Know. Computer Weekly. [online] Available at: http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Cyber-crime-what-every-business-needs-to-know [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Baines, S. (2013). Businesses Need to Protect against IP Theft. The Guardian. [online] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/feb/11/intellectual-property-theft-cyber-security [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

The Cost of Cyber Crime. (2011). 1st ed. [ebook] Guildford: Detica Limited, pp.5-6. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/60942/THE-COST-OF-CYBER-CRIME-SUMMARY-FINAL.pdf [Accessed 20 Nov. 2015].

Phishing

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Phishing (Microsoft, 2014) is one of the most common cyber crimes in the world. Phishing, as the name suggests, is similar to ‘fishing’. Fraudsters are send a large amount of emails randomly that may link to malicious software and waits for victims who take the bait so that they can steal personal information or important documents. The word of ‘phishing’ can be traced by to the mid- 1990s, when the first malware America Online Hell was created (Rekouche, 2011). These cyber criminals uses social engineering skills and pretend to be important organisations, such as banks, to convince you to follow the steps on their email in order to take control of their account and gain certain benefits. One example of social engineering skills it to pit people into fear. This can be done by sending victims emails about account being hacked, and then requiring the victim to type his password for reclaiming the account. 

Phishing is prevalent globally. In 2010, a report analysed that 0.5% of emails are phishes in the United Kingdom whilst 1% in South Africa, which suffers from phishing most seriously on earth (MessageLabs Intelligence: 2010 Annual Security Report, 2010). There are about 200 billions of worldwide emails sent and received per day (Radicati, 2014), and I would say that even 0.1% of email in the world (200 million) are phishing emails the problem is still too serious. 

It is interesting to know that why so many people commit phishing. Phishing has been developed for long. The strategies of committing have not changed so much. in a few words, committed by fake or stolen accounts and sending malicious emails to many email addresses. As committing cyber crimes can get ‘big rewards’ and the risk of being arrested is relatively low, there are still many people committing cyber crimes nowadays. Another thing is that phishing messages can be sent through various media, and not only limited to emails, so even though people may have learnt a lesson in falling into a phishing trap in a medium, they can still easily fall into the same trap through another medium, if they do not closely examine the possibility of the message being a phishing one. Despite the above facts, nowadays, the success rate is not as high. In the past, when phishing was something new, the targets were less aware phishing emails because they do not have the experience and also phishing was not so frequent. Through different social media and education works by schools and software companies, people are constantly reminded of the danger of phishing and have become more alert of the issue.

27 year-old Olukunle Babatunde and 25 year-old Tamar Abdulhamid were convicted of conspiracy to defraud UK banks by phishing emails in 2013 and they sentenced to 5 years in jail (Finance Magnates, 2013). It is a representative case for how government reacts to serious cases of phishing. Through the phishing emails, they gained more than £750,000 and about 760 victims were involved. This case was in charge by the National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) which is a specialist agency for cybercrime. From this, we can see that to the national extent, Internet is monitored by government. NCCU has asserted that information and intelligence associated with serious and organised cybercrime will always be shared with the public for identifying those ‘cyber threats’ and prevent the risk public being the victim of cyber crimes. 

References:

Finance Magnates, (2013). Cyber-criminal Successfully Convicted on Charges of Phishing Fraud. [online] Available at: http://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/payments/cyber-criminal-successfully-convicted-on-charges-of-phishing-fraud/ [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

MessageLabs Intelligence: 2010 Annual Security Report. (2010). 1st ed. [ebook] Symantec Corp., p.56. Available at: https://www.incibe.es/file/27gHxrzWsYyeyRTFYq8MuQ [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

Microsoft, (2014). How to Recognise Phishing Email Messages, Links, or Phone Calls. [online] Available at: http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

Radicati, S. (2014). Email Statistics Report, 2014-2018. 1st ed. [ebook] London: Email Statistics Report, p.4. Available at: http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

Rekouche, K. (2011). Early Phishing. 1st ed. [ebook] p.1. Available at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.4692.pdf [Accessed 13 Nov. 2015].

Cyber Crime and Internet Frauds

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/15621929928640492/

Cyber crime is a very popular yet controversial crime. Many people thinks that technology is vital. They are too indulged in the convenience brought by technology, and many of them claim that they could not live without electronic devices. However, they are not aware of the fact that the Internet can also be a crime scene too, and substantiality is not necessary. Cybercrimes can be committed via many different means including every electronic devices you can use in your daily life: computers, hard disk drives, tablets, smartphones, etc. It just can happen in anywhere and at any time. 

People often commit cyber crimes in groups, sharing certain strategies and skills on how to ‘attack’ targets and computer systems. They like to hack into victims’ accounts so that they can control over their devices and steal their personal details such as bank account password, undercover documents and photos that can be used to intimidate the owner for money or otherwise they would be revealed to the public. Through network they can commit crime anonymously, not necessarily in person, and that is why tracking cyber-criminals can be so difficult. 

IP address is an identity to trace the location of computer users. However, it is very difficult in fact for the government can trace the criminals if he is in another country. The law-enforcement agents in the country in which the criminal is located may not cooperate to help arresting him if there are no memorandums signed between the two countries in hunting down criminals together for that particular crime.

Online shopping is a very typical example. It is not uncommon that we buy a product online because the product is out of stock in retail shops or simply it is more convenient to do so. However, we cannot avoid the risk that the product is not genuine. Alibaba, a renowned e-commerce company in China, was sued by Gucci for selling counterfeit goods in May (BBC, 2015). As merchants care about profit, they can hardly disburse a large amount of money to monitor the great number of e-shops to ensure no counterfeit products are sold under their companies’ names. Although some may suggest products reviews can help avoid the risk of buying fake goods, the fact is that fake reviews also exist. Amazon, a renowned worldwide online shop, in October, sued over 1,000 sellers for fake product reviews (Wattles, 2015). Internet fraud, in fact, is ubiquitous. 

Since cybercrime have become more prevalent, the government is enacting stricter legislations to prevent cyber crimes and heavier punishments to convict cyber criminals. Cyber crimes are governed under Computer Misuse Act 1990 and in May, government modified the maximum prison sentence in the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to life sentence to further suppress cyber crimes (New Laws Include Life Sentence and Hanging for Cyber-crime, 2015). If the crime involves serious damage or threatens national security, life imprisonment may be given (Legislation.gov.uk, 2015). Through the new amendment, the government gives adequate power to law enforcement agencies to prevent cyber crimes so that potential offenders can be deterred from committing them. Every coin has two sides. Advanced technology can benefit people, but also ruin one’s life. 

References:

BBC, (2015). Gucci Sues Alibaba over 'Counterfeit Goods'. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32781236 [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].

Legislation.gov.uk, (2015). Serious Crime Act 2015. [online] Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/9/part/2/enacted [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].

New Laws Include Life Sentence and Hanging for Cyber-crime. (2015). SC Magazine. [online] Available at: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/new-laws-include-life-sentence-and-hanging-for-cyber-crime/article/414907/ [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].

Wattles, J. (2015). Amazon Sues More Than 1,000 Sellers of 'Fake' Product Reviews. CNN. [online] Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/18/technology/amazon-lawsuit-fake-reviews/ [Accessed 4 Nov. 2015].