Computer Crime :: essays research papers fc

The technological revolution has taken full swing. If a business doesnt have some form of e-commerce, or if a person does not have some form of an e-mail address, they are seen as living in the stone age. This new world of virtual life, where with the click of a button a person can travel millions of miles in a few seconds, millions of new opportunities have arisen. However, someone has to always ruin the good things in life. Very similar to Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, where the second thing built in a Utopia was a prison, the advent of ready reckoner crime is only becoming more than prevelant everyday. The whole idea of a computing machine crime is rather absurd indeed. Really, who wants to go around spray painting on ready reckoners anyway? Though the translation of estimator crime varies from source to source, the most common being, any illegal act which oinvolves a computer system (What is a computer... p.1). This holds true even if the computer contains something as s imple as a threatening e-mail. Computer crime in nature ranges from relatively small things such as software plagiarism to magnificent crimes like fraud.Computer crime itself has metamorphasized from its mere infancy. In the belatedly 1970s, a would-be criminal would need direct access to the actual computer terminal. This is because the most computer crime of that time actually involved hardware sabotage and theft, rather than a more software oriented problem. In the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s, computer crime had elevated a notch with the advent of the inter-schiool network. This network was a connection of several major universities with modem lines. Educated computer users were now changing each others ideas and information, but not for the malicious, but instead for the better. The mid to late 1980s saw the rise of computer hackers such as Kevin Mitnick. kevin Mitnick was caught at least a half dozen times, with the charges ranging from criminal tresspassing to fraud. Mitnick had broken into several corporations servers,n one being the well reknowned Sun Microsystems. When he was arrested Mitnick became a martyr and a heron to many teenage computer enthusiasts. These teens would be determined to carry on the symbolic spirit, or what they thought to be, of Kevin Mitnick. However, the computer crimes that thses users perpatrate cost small businesses and corporations millions each year, put restraints on legitimate computer users and still remain an extremely dangerous, costly and virtually unstoppable crime.