Common Computer Crimes

The first common computer crimes is Viruses. A computer virus is a malware program that, when executed, replicates by inserting copies of itself (possibly modified) into other computer programs, data files, or the boot sector of the hard drive; when this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected". Viruses often perform some type of harmful activity on infected hosts, such as stealing hard disk space or CPU time, accessing private information, corrupting data, displaying political or humorous messages on the user's screen, spamming their contacts, logging their keystrokes, or even rendering the computer useless. However, not all viruses carry a destructive payload or attempt to hide themselves—the defining characteristic of viruses is that they are self-replicating computer programs which install themselves without user consent. For example, the Melissa virus. In March 1999, it disrupted e-mail service around the world. In 1999, hungry and curious minds downloaded a file called List.DOC in the alt.sex Usenet discussion group, assuming that they were getting free access to over 80 pornographic websites. Little did they know that the file within was responsible for mass-mailing thousands of recipients and shutting down nearly the entire Internet.

The second one is Trojan horses. A Trojan horse, or Trojan, in computing is any malicious computer program which misrepresents itself as useful, routine, or interesting in order to persuade a victim to install it. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the wooden horse. Trojans are generally spread by some form of social engineering, for example where a user is duped into executing an e-mail attachment disguised to be unsuspicious, (e.g., a routine form to be filled in), or by drive-by download. Although their payload can be anything, many moderns’ forms act as a backdoor, contacting a controller which can then have unauthorized access to the affected