Cyber Crime Essay: Threats to Society from Criminals and State Actors

This essay provides an overview of cyber crime, emphasizing the threats posed by both private criminals and state-sponsored actors. It begins by highlighting the increasing prevalence of cyber crime due to technological advancements and the expansion of the internet. The essay then delves into the various types of threats, including financial crimes, hacking, and data breaches, and the motivations behind these actions. It distinguishes between private criminals, who often seek financial gain, and state-sponsored actors, who may target sensitive data for espionage or other strategic purposes. The essay also examines specific threats like hacktivism, phishing, ransomware, and malware, detailing how they impact individuals, businesses, and governments. It concludes by discussing the negative impacts of cyber crime on society, the importance of implementing strong security measures, and the need for robust policies to protect sensitive data. The essay references various sources to support its claims and provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject.

Cyber Crime

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION:..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY:.................................................................................................................................1
Discuss the different kinds of threat posed to society by private criminals and state sponsored
actors...........................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES :..............................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION:
Cyber crime in today's world is a major threat to business as well as society. It has highly
affected people's life in negative way. The crimes are increasing day by day as due to expansion
of internet (Summers and Young, 2014) Also, there has been significant changes in technology
that has allowed people to involve more in cyber crimes. Generally, most of the crimes are done
for financial purpose. It has provided tool to people to earn money in illegal way. Many crimes
occur when people do banking transactions. Hacker hack their data and take advantage of it. The
risk of cyber crime has increased with increase in transfer of digital money (Arief and Adzmi,
2015) This essay will describe different kinds of threats posed to society by private criminals and
state-sponsored actors.
MAIN BODY:
Discuss the different kinds of threat posed to society by private criminals and state sponsored
actors
The world is becoming completely hooked on information and communication
technology. It has completely shaped life of people with computers, smartphones, internet, etc.
With expansion of internet crimes related to it has increased a lot. It has created a great impact
on business as well as people (Kruse, Frederick and Monticone, 2017). These kinds of crimes
usually occurs while doing banking transactions. Hackers tries to hack personal and confidential
information of people to use for financial gain. As competition has increased in the market it has
forced companies to steal other company data in order to increase their market share. For this
they pay huge amount to professional hackers for providing data to them. This has also resulted
in increase in number of cyber crimes. Moreover, hackers have formed groups for getting more
involved in these kinds of activities. Along with this, there are some state sponsored actors
formed by government for some specific project or objective. It has done to get sensitive data.
Actors consists of professional hackers, internet groups, etc. that are either formed by
organisations or government (Arief, Adzmi and Gross, 2015). Generally, they are not
interested in money rather they focus on sensitive data by attacking IT infrastructure. By using
people data crimes are been done. Organisation has also been involved in doing this. Leakage of

information has increased threat of doing physical harm to others. It is the reason why hackers
are included in cyber crimes.
The increase in rate of cyber crime is due to poor policies and laws which has encouraged
hackers to steal data. It has created negative impact on society (Rotich and Muketha, 2014).
Moreover, it has provided a platform to earn money in illegal way. Besides this, due to
continuous advancements in technology it has made it difficult to catch criminals. On the other
hand government has developed policies to have control on cyber crimes. In some countries
cyber crimes has reduced while in others it as increased. There are various areas in which cyber
crimes is done. The areas are financial, fraud, crime against children, etc. it has affected society
in negative way. These threats have created a feeling of fear among people. Now they prefer
doing banking transactions in traditional way rather than online. The area in which crimes has
increased is fraud and finance. Fraud is most common and happens with large number of people.
But criminals have focused in finance area as transfer of money digitally has increased. People
prefer this as it is easy and safe.
Private criminals are those who works individually. They target those people who can be
easily influenced (Paul and Aithal, 2018). People involve in this steal data for their own benefit.
It can be threat to society in various ways. There are six types of threats by private criminals that
are as follows :-
 Hacktivism- It is a crime in which computer systems are targeted by hackers for a
particular purpose. This is done by using different tools that helps in easily accessing of
network. It can be done for personal purpose as well. This is the most common type of
threat that occurs in cyber crime (Mazurczyk, Holt and Szczypiorski, 2016). It is related
to hacking in which any network can be hacked. With this hacker enters into network and
steals sensitive data. It is very difficult to identify that network is been hacked unless
hacker do any malicious activity.
 Insiders- These are people who enters into a system by unauthorised access. Their main
purpose is to provide sensitive data to third party. An insider can also be an organisation
employee. This threat arises due to poor security measures or policies. It has allowed staff

to gain confidential data (Sunde, Flaglien and Axelsson, 2017). Insider uses
organisation system or network to gain access. By entering in it sensitive data is steal.
 Terrorists – Internet is highly used by terrorists groups to involve in cyber crime. They
do crimes to for financial purpose. Also, with rise in use of social media terrorists groups
are influencing youngsters. They are brain washing their minds to get involved in these
activities. There has been significant threat of terrorists attacks in the world. By using this
terrorists groups target a region. In that they start doing these activities.
 Espionage – In this government intelligence agencies or public sector companies are
targeted for stealing sensitive information (McMahon and Bressler, 2015). It is because
internet has enabled foreign agencies to conduct espionage. Moreover, due to poor
technical IT infrastructure and security measures government programs are major target.
The espionage activities has raised in recent times. Country steal other data to take
advantage of it. This has resulted in poor relations with neighbouring countries.
State sponsored actors are those people who are involved in cyber crimes. They are either
formed by government or organisations to work for them. Moreover, these actors works for
specific purpose or objectives (Rotich and Muketha, 2014). They belong to different categories
and performs various tasks. It is as follows :-
 Hackers – These people are having deep knowledge of computer and technology. They
are expert in hacking and exploit others systems for their own benefit. They are also
subdivided into ethical, gray hat hackers. Different functions are performed by them
according to their experience and skills.
 Malware authors – These people are expert in developing software and have high
programming knowledge (Taylor, Fritsch and Liederbach, 2014). They develop
software for criminal activities. They do not require any specific tools for hacking. A
software can damage a large umber of systems at one time.

 Cyber scammers – They are having very little knowledge in cyber crime. They try to
attract hacker attention by involving in fake advertising. It is done by promoting fake
lottery, job offering, etc.
From state actors different types cyber threat can be occurred. It can have a great impact
on society as well as people (Lagazio, Sherif and Cushman, 2014). Generally, they work in
groups to achieve specific objectives. Many organisation use them for their benefit. Different
types of cyber threat are as follows :-
 Hacktivism- It is a crime in which computer systems are targeted by hackers for a
particular purpose. This is done by using different tools that helps in easily accessing of
network. It can be done for personal purpose as well (Choucri, Madnick and Ferwerda,
2014). It is the most common type of threat that occurs in cyber crime.
 Insiders- These are people who enters into a system by unauthorised access. Their main
purpose is to provide sensitive data to third party. An insider can also be an organisation
employee. This threat arises due to poor security measures or policies. It has allowed staff
to gain confidential data (Lavorgna and Sergi, 2016).
 Phishing – It is an activity in which fraud emails are sent by companies to people for
gathering personal information like credit card number, passwords, etc. It is generally
done using other ways also like telephones, text message, etc. Moreover, websites are
also used in this to gather people data. In this URL send to person to click it. When it is
done person data is collected (Aggarwal, Arora and Ghai, 2014). It is done to get
unauthorised access to person financial account. This attack can be prevented by not
visiting any suspicious links or emails.
 Ransomware- in most cases it is used as phishing attack. Ransomware commonly
exploits victims data. Afterwards money in demanded against it. But there is no
guarantee that victim will get back data or not.

 Malware- It is similar to ransomware but occurs in different forms. In this malware is
reached to large number of users rather than only specific ones (Saragih and Siahaan,
2016). It can also occur through phishing.
For reducing cyber crime security measures has been modified. Network is made more
secured by installing firewalls. Also, authorised access is given by providing password and ID to
individuals. Companies are using cloud computing in their network. With this they have to spend
less on IT infrastructure. Moreover, the data of customers and intellectual data is been secured in
separate database. For storing data, database are been used so that in case of data loss it can be
retrieved (Kumar, Sekharaiah and Mounitha, 2015). Furthermore, cyber crimes has given many
tools to people for criminal activities.
Generally, most of cyber crime occurs in banking transactions. People have suffered huge
loss due to this. It has enforced banks to create a platform from where transactions can be
monitored. They have to install security measures to protect their data. Along with this,
government has created special cells to investigate cyber crimes to catch the criminals (Kruse,
Frederick and Monticone, 2017). But in most cases it is difficult to catch them because of
technology that is been used. Furthermore, due to certain restrictions it is harsh to catch
criminals. These threats have resulted in disadvantages of using internet. It has forced business to
implement strong security measures to protect their data. Also, government has developed
policies to be followed by organisation. It ensures customer data is secured. It can be said that
cyber crime has affected overall society. It has transformed the way of doing business and
communicating with people. Also, it has lead to some major consequences that has allowed
advancements in technology. Moreover, it has created some restriction for business in collecting
data. Data privacy is been implemented by organisation to protect data of customers. This has
resulted in reduction of cyber crimes within organisation (Choucri, Madnick and Ferwerda,
2014). furthermore, it has to make some changes in policies for protecting sensitive data.
CONCLUSION
From this essay it is concluded that cyber crimes has been major threat to people. Cyber
crimes has increase that has allowed people. Hackers tries to hack personal and confidential

information of people to use for financial gain. Private criminals are those who works
individually. People involve in this steal data for their own benefit. State sponsored actors are
those people who are involved in cyber crimes. They are either formed by government or
organisations for specific purpose or objectives. They belong to different categories and
performs various tasks. There are various types of threats posed to society that are hacktivism,
phishing, ransomware, etc. It has highly affected business and society.
REFERENCES :
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Prentice Hall Press
Online :
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