Cybercrime
Definition
Offences where a computer network is the tool or the target. Tool-based cybercrime includes fraud, harassment, and intellectual property theft conducted online. Target-based cybercrime includes hacking, ransomware attacks, and denial-of-service attacks directed at computer systems. The Budapest Convention (2001) defines the main categories in international law.
Related terms
- Chain of custody
- The documented chronological record of who collected, handled, transferred, and examined a piece of evidence. For digital evidence, chain of custody includes...
- Corporate crime
- Illegal acts committed by or on behalf of a corporate organisation for the organisation's benefit. Distinct from occupational crime because the wrongdoing...
- Cyber forensics
- The branch of forensic science concerned with collecting, preserving, and analysing digital evidence from networked environments for use in legal proceedings. Covers...
- Digital forensics
- The discipline concerned with the recovery, preservation, and analysis of evidence stored on physical digital devices. Primary evidence sources are disk images,...
- Enterprise theory
- A theoretical framework that analyses organised crime as a rational business enterprise responding to market conditions. Associated with criminologist Dwight Smith, who...
- Indicator of Compromise (IoC)
- An observable artefact that suggests a system has been involved in a malicious event. Static analysis produces file-based IoCs: cryptographic hashes, embedded...
- Network flow record (NetFlow)
- A summarised record of a network conversation: source IP, destination IP, ports, protocol, byte count, and duration. Flow records do not contain...
- Neutralisation techniques
- The vocabulary of justifications identified by Sykes and Matza (1957) by which offenders deny the wrongfulness of their acts: denial of injury,...
- Organised crime
- A structured group of three or more persons that operates continuously, with the aim of committing serious offences for material benefit, and...
- White-collar crime
- Crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of their occupation (Sutherland, 1939). The category covers...
Explained in these topics
- Cyber Forensics vs Digital Forensics: Scope and BoundariesCriminal offences in which a computer or network is either the instrument (used to commit the offence) or the target (attacked by the offence). Examples includ...
- Organised, White-Collar, Corporate, and CybercrimeOffences where a computer network is the tool or the target. Tool-based cybercrime includes fraud, harassment, and intellectual property theft conducted online...