What Is Cyber Crime? What Are the Different Types of Cyber Crime?

 What Is Cyber Crime? What Are the Different Types of Cyber Crime?

| Computer Forensics

Cyber crime, as the name suggests, is the use of digital technologies such as computers and the internet to commit criminal activities. Malicious actors (often called “cyber criminals”) exploit computer hardware, software, and network vulnerabilities for various purposes, from stealing valuable data to disrupting the target’s business operations. The different types of cyber crime include:

Hacking: Gaining unauthorized access to a computer system or account, often to inflict further damage on the target

Phishing: Impersonating legitimate companies or individuals to trick users into revealing sensitive information

Malware: Spreading malicious software such as viruses, worms, Trojans, and ransomware within a device or network

Identity theft: Stealing personal data such as names, addresses, and social security numbers to fraudulently assume someone’s identity

News headlines are full of high-profile and high-impact cyber crime cases. In May 2021, for example, the U.S. oil pipeline system Colonial Pipeline was subject to a ransomware attack that halted its operations for nearly a week, leading to fuel shortages across the U.S. East Coast (Turton & Mehrotra, 2021). In 2023, the pharmacy services provider PharMerica announced that the personal data of 5.8 million patients—including names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers—had been stolen by cyber criminals (Toulas, 2023).

What Are the Different Types of Cyber Crime?

The impact of Cyber Crime

Cyber crime can affect individuals, businesses, and society in a variety of ways:

Financial losses: Both individuals and businesses can suffer economic damage due to cyber crime. For example, a cyber attack that steals payment card information can lead to credit card fraud and identity theft.

Personal effects: After a cyber attack, individuals may need to spend time protecting themselves and preventing further damage. Becoming a cyber crime victim can also be psychologically detrimental, resulting in anxiety and stress.

Business disruption: Some cyber crimes, such as denial of service (DoS) attacks, are designed to disrupt a company’s operations for as long as possible. This can lead to website downtime, loss of customers and profits, and reputational damage.

Public safety: Cyber criminals may target critical infrastructure such as power grids or manufacturing plants. This can disrupt essential services and even create risks to public safety.

Statistics on the cost of cyber crime show that it remains a threat to be taken seriously:

The global average cost of a data breach was $4.45 million in 2023 (IBM, 2023).

Cyber crime is the world’s third-largest “economy,” after only the U.S. and China (Vainilavičius, 2023).

Organizations of all sizes and industries have been impacted by cyber crime:

In June 2023, tech giant Microsoft experienced temporary disruptions to its Outlook and Azure computing services after an attack by a cyber crime group called Anonymous Sudan (Bhattacharya, 2023).

In 2022, the government of Costa Rica declared a state of emergency after many of its devices were infected by ransomware, shutting down essential services (Burgess, 2022).

A study by Barracuda Networks found that small businesses are three times more likely to be targeted by phishing attacks than large enterprises (Segal, 2022).