Cyber Crime: Threat to National Security and Government's Response

RUNNING HEAD: Cyber Crime 0
Cyber Crime
(Student Name)
9/9/2018

Cyber Crime 1
In the present scenario, every individual works and lives in a state of global
connectivity. The people exchange their ideas and conversations, which conduct a monetary
transaction with, people from another side of planet effectively and inexpensively
(McMahon, Serrato, Bressler & Bressler, 2015). Nowadays, Internet has proven itself the
effective source of communication concluding the way individual do the business. In this
sense, the world is switching towards digital era that will further boom the market. In this
digital world, cybercrimes play a vital role. It is the most recent and utmost complex problem
in the world of internet (Taylor, Fritsch & Liederbach, 2014). The cases involving
cybercrimes are increasing in great number day after day. The word cybercrime refers to the
unlawful act by the individual wherein computer is either a target or tool or both (Brown,
2015). Activities such as purchase or sale of an illegal article, online gambling, financial
crime, pornography, e-mail spoofing, intellectual property crime, forgery, cyber defamation,
cyberstalking, theft of confidential information, Trojan attacks are some of the cybercrimes.
Even though, the terrorist are using the cybercrime as a tool for accomplishment of their
target, which presents a major threat to a nation’s security (Dashora, 2011). On the path of
increasing awareness and reducing number of instances, government has enforced laws
against cybercrimes and has constituted a separate department in which professionals handle
the issues of cybercrime (Broadhurst, 2006). Some of the experts believed that the most
serious cybercrime are actually the ones sponsored by the government. Point of discussion for
today is that actually, government is sponsoring the cybercrimes for its benefits or it is a case
of sheer negligence of common people involved in business and exchanging information
online.
The rate of cyber users have increased tremendously in phase of exchanging data and
finances. This boom in exchange of data virtually has led governments to from cybercrime

Cyber Crime 2
organization’s which work for prevention of cybercrimes. Some school of thoughts believe
that these organizations are responsible for some serious crimes as they are being funded by
government itself. It is not correct in all senses. As “The Concept of Law” has presented a
human being as vulnerable, therefore to safeguard them there is a requirement of rule of law.
There are different modes and manners of committing cyber crimes, which are explained here
under - First, Unauthorised access of a network or computer system which is known as
hacking in common language. Second is theft of information that is confined in the form of
electronic data procurement unethically. Theft may be done through a virtual medium or
through physically (McCusker, 2008). Third, the bombing of email which can be done
through sending a huge number of emails to a individual or a company server which results
into crashing (Aggarwal, Arora & Ghai, 2014). Forth, Diddling of data, which means
changing of data, it involves varying the data before processes of a computer and altering it
back after completion of the process. Fifth, attack of salami, which is majorly committed for
the purpose of financial crime (McGuire & Dowling, 2013). The main targets of the attackers
are financial institutions, denial of service attack. The system of the individual is drowned
with lots of requests that cause the issue of the crash in the system. Moreover, Virus or the
worm attack which is mostly used by the attacker to harm the data of the victim. They are the
database which attaches to file or system formerly automatically circulated themselves to
another files, computer or network which affect the data by either deleting or altering it,
Sixth, through Trojan attack which means unauthorized programme which gain control over
system of another which representing itself as an authorized programme. Seventh, through
internet time theft, which include acquire access to the victim login id with the password.
Lastly, through jacking of web, in this kind of felonies, the hacker acquires the access and
tries to control on the website of another. (Nykodym, Taylor & Vilela, 2008).

Cyber Crime 3
Therefore, the cybercrimes create a threat to the national security as they create a fear
in common men inside or in any section. The cybercrimes adversely affects the
synchronization between different languages, religious, racial, regional groups or caste or
societies, coercing or restraining the law that is set-up by the government and threatening the
integrity and sovereignty of the nation. These disparities create a great negative impact on the
government of the countries (Brewster, Kemp, Galehbakhtiari & Akhgar, 2015).
The cybercrimes cover worldwide which is known as cyber-terrorism. The financial
and operational strain was faced internationally engaged in fighting with cybercrime. The
unrelenting and exponential rise in the cybercrime attack creates a great impact on the public
funding. The state-sponsored cyber-attacks also divert the attention of the government
towards the protection of government department and critical national infrastructures (Mack,
2015).
In recent years, the data from the Internal Revenue Service has been stolen by
criminal hackers and nation-state. The intelligence agencies and the State Department with
include millions of government employee files apparently exhilarated by the Chines military
and U.S officials. It has been observed that more than two lakh cases of cyber security attack
occurred in last three years and the government –sponsored organization has a contribution to
some extent in these attacks. Some of the cybercrimes were sponsored by government such as
cyber-attack by Russian, China and more countries. While many governments sponsored
organization, target governments for intelligence collection. Among which one of the case is,
the case of WannaCry, it was a ransomware attack that spread rapidly in 2017. In this case,
computer were infected and encrypted the content of their hard drive, then demanded a
payment in Bitcoins in order to decrypt them. It exploited vulnerability in Microsoft
Windows using code that had been secretly developed by the United States National Security.