What Exactly Is Considered A Cybercrime?

There are many different cybercrime definitions out there, my definition is to gain financial benefit through fraud or to violate national security using the internet and or with the use of a computer. It could be hacking a bank to steal credit or debit cards, hacking someone’s accounts, hacking a company, or something involving national security, like hacking Solar Winds.

Interestingly, sex crimes and illegal gambling could potentially be considered cybercrimes. However, the government will rarely charge someone with cybercrime in those cases. Instead, the individual will be charged with the underlying crime or the specific law that they violated. The only exception to this rule is when the suspect is charged with threatening communication or cyberstalking, in which case they may be charged with cybercrime. But pornography, gambling, and sex crimes, committed over the internet, are rarely charged as cybercrimes.

What Are the Previous and Ongoing Trends in Cybercrimes That You Are Seeing?

Cybercrime exploded in the late 90s and early 2000s. The nationals of the former Soviet Union countries were the forefathers, with others joining later. At that time, cybercrime mostly constituted of carding, which is a slang term to steal debit or credit card numbers over the internet by hacking some entity that holds such information, which can be done in many different ways. Some of the techniques used sniffers to steal credit or debit card information from the payment processing terminal. Every time a debit or credit card was run through the machine, the sniffer would get the information and send it to the hacker, somewhere in Belarus or Kazakhstan.

People would make money by either reselling the information to others or by making purchases online to either keep or resell for an even bigger profit. It is also possible to make clones of bank cards and go to ATMs and pull out cash. I represented an individual who was able to gain access to a database of a major bank, using that access he was able to increase available balances on accounts and remove daily cash withdrawal limits so that his coconspirators were able to empty out ATMs around the world, causing tens of millions in damages in a matter of days.

Presently Cybercrime has become very sophisticated to the point where Secret Service has a full-time department for combating it, which shows how seriously the United States government takes the threat. In terms of trends, there were many big players in the 2000s and the early 2010s who were selling millions of dollars in information, however, over the last 10 years a lot of the bog players got arrested or left the scene. Now, instead of having dozen prominent figures, you have 100000 medium and small ones. Another trend as of late is ransomware. Many hospitals and local departments have been hacked with ransomware, which encrypted their computers and databases until hackers would unencrypt them in return for large payment.

For more information on Cybercrimes, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (718) 989-2908 today.