COM 125 - Entry #6: Cybercrime news reported in Singapore

Cybercrime is by far, one of the most difficult crimes to prove and give concrete evidence due to the widespread nature of the Internet. Of the few reports that cybercrimes were actually reported, and the criminal dealt with, many others go unreported and are simply termed as "unfounded claims" for lack of enough concrete evidence or the inability to trace the souce and track down the culprits. For example, the report "Washington State Man Pleads Guilty To Charges Of Transmitting Internet Virus" - 15 Feb 2007, is only one of the success stories. Of the 7 cybercrimes reported in 2007, i'm sure many others go unreported. This is one of the downsides of the prevalence of the Internet, despite its many uses and advantages.

One of the ways this criminal used to spread his malware was to send messages to IRC users that invited users to click on a link to a website. Once a user clicked on that link, they were connected to another computer and the malware was downloaded to that user's computer, creating a backdoor access to the computer of which the user was unaware. Users of the DarkMyst system were infected by clicking on a link disguised as a link to a movie. When they clicked on that link, other malware was downloaded. Once the backdoor was discovered, users had to spend time, money and resources to remove the unwanted code.

Not only does this take up valuable time and money to remove the malware, it is also destructive and malicious. Losing valuable information, documents and resources in the process can be very frustrating and leads to the employment of more resources to 'clean' it up.