The Evolution Of Cybercrime
Digital attacks may be a new threat, but ideas of infiltration are as old as mankind.
It may seem bizarre to claim Julius Caesar was a pioneer of internet security, but he appears to have been the first person in human history to employ end-to-end encryption. By writing military correspondence in a code known as Caesar’s cipher, the Roman leader ensured that information could be transmitted securely without malicious interference.
Cybercrime and Punishment
Over two thousand years on from Caesar’s cipher, the misappropriation of sensitive data remains a hot topic. Cybercrime has evolved as a response to the internet, covering any illicit acquisition of valuable information from credit card details to intellectual property and customer data. An entire industry of hackers, traders, financiers and marketplaces has been spawned – collectively referred to by cynics as CaaS (Communications-as-a-Service). Cybercrime now represents one of the biggest threats to modern business, despite the common misapprehension that it only ever happens to other people, and there remains a surprising degree of naivety among the public about how widespread this issue has become.
High, Wide and Ransom
Cybercrime began with the internet and quickly evolved into email spam, bombarding people with unwanted and intrusive messaging. Denial of Service attacks soon followed, using the email spammers’ development of zombie computer botnets to crash websites. This mutated into a focus on acquiring personal information from domestic devices, while the logical end product of individually-targeted interference is a concept known as ransomware – the current business model of choice for cybercriminals.
More lucrative than stealing credit card data and more efficient than identity fraud, ransomware is effectively online blackmail. People whose details were harvested in the Ashley Madison hack have become popular targets, while another frequently used technique is to encrypt a computer’s contents with malware and only unlock it once a ransom has been paid. The use of untraceable browsers and Bitcoin has enabled the perpetrators to remain anonymous, though many of their victims must share a degree of blame. Weak password choices, a lack of antivirus software and a willingness to visit the less reputable corners of the internet can all increase the risk of succumbing to a ransomware attack.
There’s Gonna Be A Jailbreak
There were fears in the late 2000s that mobile phones represented the future face of cybercrime, but this hasn’t really happened. Apart from the odd banking app, there simply isn’t much information of value on most people’s phones. Account details and login credentials are typically stored in the cloud rather than on the device, so stealing the handset is of no benefit, and the loss of phone book contacts or WhatsApp conversations hardly compares to the personal documents and sensitive files typically stored on a computer.
Another reason why mobile phones have remained largely impervious to cybercrime is that Apple and Google regulate the software that can be installed on each device. That makes it difficult for criminals to access devices through official app stores. However, many users ‘jailbreak’ their handsets so they can install third-party software outwith the OS provider’s approval, such as illegal streaming apps. A jailbroken phone has no restrictions on what can be installed and run, and many fraudulent apps exist specifically to harvest user data. Apple reported 225,000 compromised accounts on jailbroken phones last year, reflecting the dangers of straying outside the official app store.
Ancient Methods
With emails now closely guarded, and ‘Internet of Things’-enabled devices unlikely to yield sufficiently valuable information to be worth targeting, company servers remain on the frontline of cybercrime. The importance of employing cutting-edge software and taking all possible precautions with sensitive or valuable data really can’t be stressed enough – as past victims will ruefully attest. Criminals and rebels have been attempting to steal sensitive information since the days of the Roman Empire, and they’re not going to stop now.