What is Cybercrime?
A cybercrime is an offence committed using a computer system or network. The offender can be a single individual or part of a large criminal group, often never meeting each other face to face and may be based anywhere in the world. The offender can be motivated by either financial gain or to access information for illicit activities, for example child pornography.
Some examples of cybercrimes include hacking (accessing a computer without the owner’s knowledge or permission), stealing and possessing illegal images and videos, and accessing personal data such as banking details and email addresses. Other types of cybercrimes are pharming attacks that redirect a person from a legitimate website to a fraudulent one, cryptojacking (using computers to mine cryptocurrency for the attacker); attribution fraud (using hijacked devices or malware-infected PCs to generate clicks or conversations on ads); and domain spoofing (where an ad appears to be on a genuine site when it’s actually delivered to a fake one).
Many of these offences can have significant impacts on businesses or government systems and infrastructure. The criminals can also cause significant distress to victims. For example, the WannaCry ransomware attack impacted over 230,000 computers worldwide and demanded payment of Bitcoin in exchange for decrypting files. The victims were not able to access their data and some lost money, others experienced loss of business.