Cyber Criminals

Every day, we hear about multiple cyber-crimes that occur in our surroundings, executed and accomplished by criminals named cybercriminals. Cyber-criminal is one the type of criminal; the only difference is they are highly educated and use the internet and electronic item as their tool for crime.

"Cyber-criminals are the individual who attempts criminal offense related to internet." 

"Cybercriminals are that educated individual who commit crime over the internet with computer as a tool, as a target and as crime accessory.”

Cyber-criminals target a computer to carry out conventional crimes such as illegal gambling, fraud, malicious activities, spam, etc., and spread viruses, theft data, and identify theft. Cybercriminals also use the computer as an accessory to do the attack and save or store illegal data.

Different roles of cyber-criminals as they worked in organized groups.

Hackers	Hackers can exploit application, system, and network vulnerabilities.
Cashiers	Cashiers can control drop account and account names to cybercriminals.
IT Experts	Cybercriminals act as IT experts who maintain a cybercriminal's organization IT infrastructure, including encryption technologies, servers, and databases.
Distributors	These criminals sell and distribute all the stolen data and goods for associated cyber-criminals.
Programmers	Cybercriminals can write code and programs for their organization.
Money mules	These criminals manage bank account wire transfers.
Leaders	Cyber-criminals also work as leaders as they are connected to large criminal organizations bosses that direct and assemble the cybercriminals teams lacking technical knowledge.
Tellers	This cyber criminal is trained in laundering and transferring illegal money via digital and foreign exchange methods.
Fraudsters	These are the criminals that do the fraud by creating and deploying schemes like phishing and spam
System hosts and providers	This type of criminal hosts fake servers and sites that possess illegal content.

Cyber-criminal doesn't choose a specific victim, and it is a matter of chance and action to react. The victim is selected and attacked by various methods:-

• When the victim responds to an infected ad or email.
• When the victim came in contact with the criminal through other means.
• Fake and random calls on the name of the bank and other agencies.
• Chatting with the wrong person.
• Visiting a malicious and fraudulent/duplicate site for the online transaction.
• Downloading of malware inadvertently.
• Sometimes victims unknowingly cross the path of criminals in some other way.
• Entering credit and debit card detail on fake websites.
• Stealing of private data by hacking accounts.

Various measures were taken against cyber-attacks made by cybercriminals

• Firewalls- It is a protection wall of the network that prevents access form fraud and dangerous parties.
• Cyber liability insurance is a kind of internet insurance that protects organizations and businesses from liability during a data breach. Cybercriminals stole credit card numbers and breached social security, so insurance is needed to prevent them from cyber liability.          
• Network encryption is a security protocol implemented at the network level where data is encrypted for protection purposes.
• Proxies- Proxies is a security strategy that allows users to manipulate their shared information so that hackers would get wrong or mislead data. Proxies provide a remote location to the user to encrypt their data and information.
• Network security- The network should be protected by advanced network security, including active devices, passive devices, unified threat management, and preventative devices.

Types of cyber-criminals

1. Identity thieves- It is the common and oldest cybercrime. Victims' personal information like name, phone number, address, bank details, place of employment, and social security number is stolen for identity scams. Beyond this, with the latest computing, cybercriminals can hack government and corporate databases to fetch a high volume of personal information and identities. With the help of this, various money-related crimes were recorded, but due to the latest technology and awareness among people, these crimes are under control.
2. Phishing scammers- Phishing scams are the most common attempts to steal personal and sensitive information through victims' computers via a phishing website. These websites are created to trap the victim, small business, corporate, or government websites where users unknowingly enter personal information (bank passwords, social security numbers, and home addresses). The stolen information is either sold to the dark web or misused by criminals for identity fraud scams. Business holders should be preventive with phishing scams that try to copycat their business website. These fake websites defame the company's reputation and brand, leading to a decrease in earnings.
3. Internet stalkers- Cybercriminals mostly conduct this cyber-crime on social media platforms where they track and monitor the online activity of their victims and acquire their personal information to terrorize them. Internet stalkers play with victims' minds, emotions, and weaknesses for threatening them about publicly leaking their personal information on social platforms. Most stalkers fetch and misuse personal information from slander and bribery and can be both. Businesses should be aware of this kind of stalker and prevent their employees from being trapped.
   Cases of murder, kidnapping, and blackmailing are common. For example, many cases are held where criminals regularly follow users on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and other sites and notice their posts. After getting information about users' daily work, they can harm them.
4. Cyber terrorists - Cybercriminals are named cyber-terrorists when they process the well-developed, politically inspired cyber-attack to steal data and corrupt government or corporate network and compute systems. A cyber-terrorist attack is different from a regular cyber-attack. Cyber terrorists attack to harm countries, businesses, organizations, and even individuals.