Cyber the word or the ticket to everything good in this world has assumed proportions in this world (real/virtual) whose ramifications look very Orwellian. It has left a very harassed house-wife to say to her soft(ware) husband " why are you taking out your E-motions on me?". It has become fashionable to be E-talking now days. What with E-commerce, E-learning, E-business and others. One can't be left E-gnorant of the lingua franca of the modern world. But once you cut through the hype, the world that will soon encompass us looks very depressing and in many cases down right frightening.
Many governments have introduced cyber bills and the noble aim of these bills is to propel those countries into the forefront of IT (information Technology) transition. All over the world IT has become the buzzword and many other sectors have been ignored. What we are forgetting is that IT at best can be a support service that can flourish if the industry and the manufacturing sector props it up. Otherwise it will always remain a self feeding parasite. IT creates its own problems and spends enormous amounts of money in solving the same. Let's not forget the billions of dollars spent on Y2K problem or the billions that are being spent on viruses and hackers and the rest of the cyber crimes. This brings us to the topic of discussion, Cyber crime.
Crime is any outrage against the society. That is to say that by our actions which may or may not be beneficial to us we are harming the interest of many others directly or indirectly. E.g.: sending unwanted E-mails or spamming. Crime is profitable for the perpetuators of the crime except in the case of cyber crime. What is the profit motive of a virus spreader or a spammer? May be it is the thrill of being a nuisance value to the others?
One of the earlier cyber crimes is that of the hacking. It has been said that most of the hackers are very intelligent software professionals who are bored and break into protected websites of different government and non-government organizations and change the text and generally play havoc. One thing interesting about the hackers is that now days they are employed by IT giants. These IT giants routinely invite famous hackers to hack into their systems or networks.
If the hacker is able to hack the system the giant pays the agreed amount. Then the company goes back to the drawing board and tries to build better firewalls (protectors that protect against any hackers). But it is debatable whether one can encourage the hackers by providing them an incentive to hack into systems even with the noble idea of building better security.
Talking of cyber crimes leads to very good examples or incidents. One can remember a third world country citizen who duped a very famous organization like the "Euro lottery". This enterprising person claimed to have won nearly 110 Million Birr in the Euro lottery only by cleverly fiddling around with the IT networks. When asked about the Euro lottery winner the site immediately gives out the name of this enterprising person. Naturally the name and fame that the perpetuator got out of this action was very high till the bubble was burst. Same is the case with the creator of the Love-bug the virus that almost sent many companies into a downward spiral of loss and destruction. The creator of love bug was a Pilipino who was not even technically qualified.
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