THE STUDY OF CYBER SECURITY: THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE AND CYBER ETHICS

Muhammed Aneeq Ali,

International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI)

INTRODUCTION

Technological advances in the 20th century have divided the telecommunications and computer technologies, and starts the era of information age. This era saw a shift from analogue to digital technologies, with computers and digital communications becoming essential to modern society. The information society emerged as a result, but also brought new security challenges. The security of digital data, computers, and information networks now impacts every aspect of life and the global economy. Malicious activities against information systems can have extensive consequences which demands the development of cybersecurity as a means to protect digital information and systems. Cybersecurity encompasses social, legal, regulatory, and technological measures to ensure the security and integrity of digital information, promoting trust and sustainability in the information society. These emerging threats makes necessary to confront these challenges from criminals, terrorist groups, and state actors in the digital age by criminalize the malicious activities which is impossible without a legal framework.

CYBER CRIMES

The most common cybercrimes include phishing, in which the wrongdoer poses as a trustworthy institution in an effort to get a victim's passwords, financial information, or personal information. Another serious crime that is particularly common among teens is online harassment, in which the wrongdoer uses well-known social media sites to annoy the victim and try to target their social life. This can also result in cyberbullying. Internet browsing has grown risky because of invasion of privacy crimes, which include criminals trying to pry into someone's private life by, for example, breaking into their computer or secretly tracking their online habits. One can say that, all these threats can be detected by a strong antivirus. But the question is what if one poses cyber-attack by that antivirus. In that scenario, the mandatory thing is to restrict the wrongdoers and hackers by inflicting punishments driven by a strong legal system.

CYBER CRIME AND ITS CLASSIFICATIONS

Crime against individual:

Harassment & Cyberstalking: Cyberstalking is defined as the act of monitoring a person's online activities or other electronic means in order to intimidate, harass, or defame the victim; it can eventually result in harassment. Cyberstalking is primarily carried out through emails, various social media platforms, and other electronic means. Cyber defamation is the deliberate publication of false and unauthorised information online with the primary goal of defaming, insulting, or offending the target [24]. Phishing is a cybercrime in which the attacker poses as a reputable organisation in order to obtain sensitive information, such as a password, credit/debit card details, or other information that the attacker can then misuse.

Crime against property:

One of the most common cybercrimes that takes place all around the world is internet time theft. It occurs in a way that allows an unauthorised user to use the victim's paid internet hours without the victim realising it[1].

Credit card fraud:

In this case, the criminals attempt to get the cardholder's payment card information using unlawful ways.

For instance, a phoney website that poses as the authenticated (official) website is used to request private information from the user, such as a card number, password, CVV, etc.[2] Computer Vandalism:

This type of cybercrime involves the use of malicious software, or executable programs, which can either damage the entire system or steal user data.

Additionally, there is a crime related to intellectual property that comprises: Software piracy is the unlawful production of duplicate copies of the original software with the intention of profiting from its sale to end users without obtaining any legal rights from the software's original owner.[3]

Using content that is protected by copyright without the owner's consent is known as copyright infringement. Using pictures or images that are protected by copyright for professional or commercial purposes is one example.[4] 

The use of a trademark or service mark without authorisation by violating the linked organization's regulations is known as trademark infringement.[5]

Crime against organization:

Cybercrime occurs when an attacker targets a specific company in an effort to endanger it online.[6] The goal of a denial-of-service attack is to continuously bombard the target's servers with fake requests in an effort to prevent the targeted users from accessing them. For instance, in 2020, an assault using around 2.3 tbps of bandwidth was launched against AWS servers.[7] Email bombing: This kind of cybercrime involves an attacker sending a large number of emails by training a botnet to overload the recipient's inbox, which might cause the server to crash.[8] The term "data diddling" describes the practice of changing data, either by database modifications or data entering.[9]

Crime against society

Crime against society is the term used to describe the kind of crime that simultaneously impacts the entire society. Online gambling is a type of cybercrime that is carried out via the internet. Sports betting, online casinos, and poker are examples of internet gambling that requires financial transactions.

The creation or modification of legal papers or instruments, such as counterfeit money, stamps, signatures, etc., is known as forgery. Computers equipped with top-notch printers and scanners are used for this.

Web jacking: This kind of cybercrime, which is somewhat similar to hijacking, involves the attacker gaining unauthorised control of the website. In this case, the attacker creates a phoney website that could look authentic and inserts a malicious link on the victim's website that, when clicked, takes the victim to the cloned website, denying them full access to their original website. Cyber-trafficking: One kind of trafficking that occurs online is cybertrafficking. It alludes to the recruitment and promotion of victims in order to draw in customers. Cyber trafficking can also be referred to as "virtual trafficking."

TYPES OF CYBER CRIMES

Crimes done online are covered under cyber laws. It alludes to the example of legislation pertaining to internet use. Interfering with the computer Source Documents: The offence of purposefully concealing, altering, or deleting computer source code when it is required carries a potential sentence of many years in jail or a fine. Using another person's password: If someone fraudulently misuses a password, digital signature, or other unique identifier, they may be imprisoned and fined. Infidelity Using computer resources: The offender may be imprisoned and fined if they attempt to cheat on someone by using computer resources or communication devices.Publishing Private Images of Others:

It is a heinous act to take, publish, or send images of someone else's private areas without that person's knowledge or consent. The offender faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison, a hefty fine of INR two lakhs, or both.

Cyberterrorism:

In certain countries, anyone who attempts to access a computer resource without permission or prevents an authorised person from accessing it faces life in prison and a fine. This is done with the intention of endangering the integrity, sovereignty, or unity of the country.Publishing child porn or predating youngsters online: Anyone who tries to take or share inappropriately explicit pictures of a child under the age of 18 may be imprisoned and fined.Government Power to Block Websites:

Any material created, sent, or kept in a computer resource that the government deems to be detrimental to the integrity and sovereignty of the country may be seized, decrypted, or monitored. The government can also restrict any information.

Corporate data protection:

A company may be held accountable for compensating the impacted party if it implements necessary security procedures carelessly, which might result in an unjustified loss or benefit for anybody.

Conclusion:

Over the past few decades, the Internet has developed into a sophisticated medium that allows users to quickly and affordably disseminate content to one billion people worldwide. The Internet has the benefit of reaching a far larger audience—possibly a global one—than previous means of communication and trade. International borders and physical distance have no bearing on how an Internet business is implemented; many are made to increase sales internationally. Therefore, legal disputes are likely to occur in cyberspace, where it is never certain where or why they occur, where conflicting laws are primarily the result of ideological differences, and where laws are made by both national and subnational institutions as well as by countries and their representatives.

The conclusion reached is that expanding concurrent jurisdictional claims may arise from the use of traditional jurisdictional concepts in cybercrime. Furthermore, neither national nor international law contains any guiding principles that define the range of applicability. As a result, the idea becomes highly customised and applies on a case-by-case basis. Thus, countries can use a variety of theories.

Fundamentally, a nation's exercise of jurisdiction to prohibit and examine the application of dictatorial law to specific types of unusual criminal activity is justified by nationality, universality, protection, and territoriality. What is crucial is that a nation's move of jurisdiction, whether to prohibit or examine, must also be "sensible/reasonable," meaning that it must have some connection to the offender, the crime, or the victim and be reasonable in light of adjudication.

References:

[1] A. Khan, et al., “Future scope of machine learning and ai in 2022,” Future, 2021.

[2] K. Yadav, “Blockchain for iot security,” 2021

[3] P. Negi, et al., “Enhanced cbf packet filtering method to detect ddos attack

in cloud computing environment,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.7073, 2013

[4] A. M. Manasrah, et al., “An optimized service broker routing policy based

on differential evolution algorithm in fog/cloud environment,” Cluster Computing, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 1639–1653, 2019.

[5] P. Chaudhary, et al., “Shielding smart home iot devices against adverse

effects of xss using ai model,” in 2021 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE). IEEE,2021, pp. 1–5.

[6] S. Tripathi, et al., “Hadoop based defense solution to handle distributed denial of service (ddos) attacks,” 2013.

[7] M. Zwilling, et al., “Cyber security awareness, knowledge and behavior: A comparative study,” Journal of Computer Information Systems, vol. 62, no. 1, pp.82–97, 2022.

[8] I. A. Elgendy, et al., “Joint computation offloading and task caching

for multi-user and multi-task mec systems: reinforcement learning-based algorithms,” Wireless Networks, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 2023–2038, 2021.

[9] G. Tsochev, et al., “Analysis of threats to a university network using open source technologies,” in 2021 International Conference Automatics and Informatics (ICAI). IEEE, pp. 366–369.