A young teen calling himself "Mafiaboy- was arrested in Montreal, Canada early April of 2000. His crime? He was charged with at least one of the Denial-Of-Service (DoS) hacker attacks that blocked access to such popular sites as Yahoo!, Amazon, and eBay. -"Dembeck- Thirty years ago, a juvenile delinquent like "Mafiaboy- would be reduced to say, setting a mailbox on fire or some other adolescent prank. Now, with today's technology, his "adolescent prank- disrupted world wide E-commerce and attracted massive media attention.
Hackers like "Mafiaboy- are becoming more and more abundant these days, and are finding more innovative ways to accomplish their wide variety of goals. Their goal may be to send a virus to the computer of someone they dislike. Some of these "Cyber Criminals- hack into websites and destroy information, others hack into government or company computers, steal money and information, pirate software and more.
There are many forms of computerized crime; most computer crime can be traced back to one common tool (besides a computer of course) the Internet. Yes, the same information super-highway that is used by millions of people everyday has become, to a hacker, nothing more than a gateway to easy, and thanks to up-to-date technology, relatively safe criminal mischief. The Internet is used for many good things, and is an irreplaceable tool for today's world commerce, but thanks to cyber criminality, it is also a .
dangerous weapon that threatens that same commerce and even the security of the civilized world. .
There are about five main types of computerized crime. Illegal or offensive material is the first and one of the most common types. This is where the "criminal- posts illegal or offensive information or material on websites, netgroups, etc. Another common form of cyber crime is sending threatening or offensive e-mails. Sending ANY e-mail that appears to be threatening in nature, or is sent with the intent to harass the recipient is illegal.