Critical Thinking Exercise #12: Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Analysis

This assignment provides a detailed analysis of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), examining its origins in 1986 and its evolution in response to the digital age. It explores the act's role in protecting workplace data from unauthorized access and misuse, as well as its implications for both employers and employees. The analysis covers key aspects such as the legal framework, the distinction between 'access' and 'use' of computer systems, and the act's application in real-world cases, including examples of cybercrime and botnet activities. The document also discusses how employers can leverage the CFAA to address employee misconduct and prevent computer misuse. Overall, this assignment offers a comprehensive overview of the CFAA, its historical context, and its practical applications in the modern workplace.

Running head: CYBERCRIME
CYBERCRIME
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Critical Thinking Exercise #12 – Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
1. CFAA was passed in the year 1986 in United States for enhancing the cyber security.
The act has been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. As per
CFAA, a computer cannot be accessed without proper authorization. According to this
act, the person with the authorization is allowed to access only that part of the
computer system for which he or she is permitted for, beyond this, he or she may be
sued (O'Connor, 2020).
2. The CFAA is the federal statute of Anti-hacking that prohibits any unauthorized access
to the system.
In 1984, the world was just coping up with it digital dark age. The computer viruses
and the worms were just funs material for disrupting services by the engineering
student of the countries. The serious implication of these fun elements were not
ignored by the lawmakers, and the CFAA act was enacted by the Congress to prohibit
the unauthorised access to the system. The law was finally passed in the year of 1986.
3. This act is very useful in the workplace as it protected the organizational data from
misusage and unauthorized access of the employees (Carrero, 2020). These data can be
manipulated hampering integrity and privacy of the information in it, or may be used
for other illegal purposes. Hence, CFAA helps in prohibition of such activities in the
work place.
4. According to this act, anyone trying to access the any data without authorization or
beyond the limits of the authorization can be subjected to the criminal offence.
If an employee is brought in an action under the CFAA, it will help the employer to
get the details of what the employees were up to while they try to access the
organizational data.
5. CFAA or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act prevent any person from unauthorized
access to a computer or its files. If a person is doing Facebook or Internet Surfing, then
the person is not violating this act but if he or she opens any account, website or files
which are not permitted, then this law gets violated.
6. Computer misuse is the misuse of computer systems to access data or files without
proper permission. This must be prevented at work which can be done by monitoring
the activities of the employees and also setting up firewalls and other protective
software to prevent access.
7. The basic difference between the use of the computer and accessing the computer is,
the employees can access the data without manipulation. This is common in case of
Vale as he was an officer and could have access to the information. The use on the
other hand is making use of the data that has been accessed, legally or illegally
(Chowdhury, et al., 2017).

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8. The ‘Zombie King was Jason James Ancheta himself, and was a high ranking master
of “Botmaster Underground”. He was known to have hijacked more than 10000
computers including the military networks as well. In order to do so successfully, he
got himself an affiliated advertisement company, which would help in gather
information about the websites one is using while watching the ad. The botnet army
kept on expanding as the ad website would force download the software into ones’
system.
He was caught with trick when the FBI officials traded 2000 botnets for hacking
purposes. As more evidences were gathered, Ancheta was arrested.
He was sentenced for 57 months of jail, and restitution of the damaged military
websites as well.
9. As per the act, that is CFAA, even if a person is found downloading too many
scholarly articles, is convicted of cybercrime. This is due to the nature of the act,
which is too broad that even the slightest of the cyber actions beyond the convention is
subjected to crime.
The act should be narrowed down for certain specific cases, such as where the data is
misused, or manipulated, or the integrity of the data is lost, or the access which can be
potentially threatening (Yar & Steinmetz, 2019).
In this way the time can be utilized more into the serious matters rather than the
hoaxes.
10. The article reveals that a Russian hacker Aleksei Burkov was guilty of selling more than
15000 credit card accounts and was one of the most connected hackers caught by U.S.A.
He violated several laws of CFAA allowing those laws to be modified and expand and
the convict was punished accordingly.

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References:
Carrero, J. (2020). ACCESS GRANTED. Columbia Law Review, 120(1), 131-172.
Chowdhury, S., Khanzadeh, M., Akula, R., Zhang, F., Zhang, S., Medal, H., ... & Bian, L.
(2017). Botnet detection using graph-based feature clustering. Journal of Big Data, 4(1),
14.
O'Connor, M. J. (2020). Standing Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Yar, M., & Steinmetz, K. F. (2019). Cybercrime and society. SAGE Publications Limited.