Categories of Computer Crimes

Categories of Computer Crime

1. Explain in detail the four (4) common categories of computer crimes and provide at least one (1) example for each.

According to the Strayer University 2nd addiction of Digital Crime and Digital Terrorism the four common categories of computer crimes are (1) the computer as a target, (2) the computer as an instrument of the crime, (3) the computer as incidental to crime, and (4) crimes associated with the prevalence of computers (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, and Holt, 2011, 2006).

• The first category of the common four crimes is the computer as a target. The computer as a target crime has an array of offences. Some of these offences include obtaining information from computer files for the use of blackmail. Stealing protected property such as something with an IP, patent or trademark and stealing marketing information. These crimes could also lead to the destruction of those protected properties along with the destruction of operating systems and other programs with intent to disrupt a business. Another form of this type of criminal activity is the unlawful access to governmental and criminal justice documents directly through the pc. Things like making fake drivers license or passports, changing want and warrant information, changing criminal history, and hacking into government intelligence files. These are all crimes where the criminal portrays to be the operating system’s manager to gain access to all files in the system (D.Carter, 2012). An example of this is the Marcus Hess story also known as “the Hanover Hacker”. Marcus Hess was a West German computer programmer that in the late 1980’s hacked into many computers. He hacked into companies like Milnet, Air Force divisions, Army bases, and Navy Coastal systems searching for sensitive information to sell to Soviet intelligence agencies (BookRags, 2005-2006).

• Next, you have the second category, which is the computer as an instrument of a crime. This is when criminals use computers and