Abstract

There are no precise, reliable statistics on the amount of computer crime and the economic loss to victims, partly because victims do apparently not detect many of these crimes, many of these crimes are never reported to authorities, and partly because the losses are often difficult to calculate. Nevertheless, there is a consensus among both law enforcement personnel and computer scientists who specialize in security that both the number of computer crime incidents and the sophistication of computer criminals are increasing rapidly.

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Cyber crimes in Malaysia and The United States Of America. An introduction In recent years, One of the newest areas of crime is what we call cyber crimes. The crimes at least seeming anonymity of computer technologies may actually encourage some people who would not otherwise be tempted to commit crimes to do so using the Internet. A Cyber crime encompasses any criminal act dealing with computers and networks (called hacking). Additionally, cyber crime also includes traditional crimes conducted through the Internet. For example; hate crimes, telemarketing and Internet fraud, identity theft, and credit card account thefts are considered to be cyber crimes when the illegal activities are committed through the use of a computer and the Internet.They may simply believe that they will never be caught, or they may not think about being caught at all.

They may simply find the lure of committing virtual crimes too psychologically appealing to resist. Many of those who commit crimes on the Internet are in fact psychologically disturbed and need compassionate treatment by psychiatric professionals. However, this does not lessen the real harm that they can do to people and they must be stopped. Combating the global cyber crimes pandemic is becoming an increasingly urgent issue, as identity theft and spyware are occurring with alarming frequency. Early instances of cyber crime found individuals, corporations and law enforcement unprepared, uninformed and immobilized to address cyber crimes responsively.

As defined, technology has created a gateway for computer criminals, allowing for easy access to personal or business computers via the Internet. Cyber criminals use several different methods to infiltrate business and personal computers; fraudulent marketing schemes, on-line auctions, work-at-home schemes, gambling operations, and spam, just to name a few. Many times homeowners and businesses have no idea they have been the victims of a cyber crime. Types of computer crime can sometimes lose their significance when we as citizens wrap it all up into one expression, cyber crime.

There needs to be a further breakdown and a better public understanding of what computer crime actually is and these types of computer crime will hopefully shed some light on the current problems faced today. Cyber terrorism is the convergence of terrorism and cyberspace. It is generally understood to mean unlawful attacks and threats of attack against, computers, networks, and information stored on these mediums. Its done to intimidate or coerce a government or its people in to promote political or social objectives. To qualify as cyber terrorism, an attack should result in; violence against persons or property, cause enough harm to generate fear, attacks that lead to death or bodily injury, explosions, plane crashes, and severe economic loss.

Every countries nowadays including Malaysia and The United States of America government tries to protect the public by investigating network and other computer crimes, ensuring that it has the technical and legal tools to obtain necessary electronic evidence, along with hiring the best computer minds in the business. Yes, the government does look out for us on the Internet but we as a user need to take the proper steps to make sure you are always protected from cyber crimes.

Classification of cyber crimes.

Global computer-based communications cut across territorial borders, creating a new realm of human activity and undermining the feasibilityand legitimacyof applying laws based on geographic boundaries. (Post and Johnson 1996)

Cybercrime is defined as crimes committed on the Internet using computer as a tool and we innocents are the targets. There are various forms of cyber crime and we can classify it as follow;

1. Hacking The act of gaining unauthorized access to a computer system or network and in some cases making unauthorized use of this access. Hacking is also the act by which other forms of cyber-crime (e.g., fraud, terrorism, etc.) are committed. Hacking in simple terms means illegal intrusion into a computer system without the permission of the computer owner/user.

2. Denial of service attack This is an act by the criminal, who floods the band width of the victims network or fills his e-mail box with spam mail depriving him of the services he is entitled to access or provide.

3.Virus dissemination Malicious software that attaches itself to other software (virus, worms, Trojan Horse, Time bomb, Logic Bomb, Rabbit and Bacterium are the malicious soft wares)

4. Software piracy Theft of software through the illegal copying of genuine programs or the counterfeiting and distribution of products intended to pass for the original. Retail revenue losses worldwide are ever increasing due to this crime. Can be done in various ways such as end user copying, hard disk loading, Counterfeiting, Illegal downloads from the internet etc.

The Internet is a relatively new phenomenon and this cyberspace is causing problems for regulatory systems. The Internet is a world that is very difficult to govern and it is because of this that criminals are discovering the net as a place to conduct illegal activity. In today's age when everything from small gadgets to nuclear plants is being operated through computers, cyber crime has assumed threatening ramifications various kinds of cyber crimes are prevailing in the world today. Hacking, bombing, diddling, spoofing, botnet attacks, salami attacks and viruses are capable of breaching the security in the information systems of vital installations. There have been several instances in the recent past to support the prevalence of these attacks on a large scale.

Causes of cyber crimes

According to Dr. Yusof Nook (1993) and Joseph Eby Ruin (1996), there are 3 main causes of computer criminals: 1. Opportunities to commit crime, 2. Situational pressures on the individuals, 3. Issues pertaining to integrity. A decision to commit fraud is known to be influenced by the interaction of all these three causes. Opportunities include increasing individual knowledge of a companys operations, advancing to a position of trust, and becoming the only individual who knows a particular procedure (for example, correcting or modifying a computer programmed).

The challenges.
The architecture of the Internet with its ever improving technologies for online computing and the development of the Internet culture have spawned the following challenges to any legal jurisdiction in the world: i) ii) confusion as to the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed; the law does not provide for a new generation of crimes;

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difficulty in prosecuting certain types of cybercrimes as the elements of such crimes are not committed in a single jurisdiction;

iv) v) vi)

the difficulty in collecting evidential proof of computer crimes; ignorance of Internet users on using technology for protection; and the implementation of encryption technologies and security technologies that are time consuming and costly.

Jurisdictional issues
In the online world, a defamatory statement which is criminal in nature may be posted by a Malaysian in an American website that is hosted in Zimbabwe. Likewise, 7an illegal online money transfer may have the instructions issued in the United Kingdom to a bank in Barbados, to transfer funds into a bank account in Switzerland belonging to a Chinese national. Both of these crimes may be committed in the span of 10 minutes. The ease in the execution of such activities and the inter-jurisdictional nature of these transactions are common in cyberspace. These two features of the architecture of cyberspace provide speed and confusion as to the jurisdiction in which the crime was committed. Such attributes are added advantages for online criminals. These attributes are indeed posing teasers to all lawmakers around the world. In Malaysia, the intended solution may be found in S. 9 of the CCA. This section provides that any person, whatever his nationality or citizenship shall be liable for an offence within the CCA, if in the event the computer, program or data (used or forwarded to commit the offence) was in Malaysia or are capable of being sent to or used in Malaysia.

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The name worm was taken from The Shockwave Rider, a 1970s science fiction novel by John Brunner. Researchers writing an early paper on experiments in distributed computing noted the similarities between their software and the program described by Brunner and adopted the name..., at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm

COMPARISON OF CYBER CRIMES IN MALAYSIA AND USA New Age Crimes Malaysians are now exposed to computer crimes that have amusing or strange names. Our country Malaysia and United States of America are also exposed with the same computer crimes but we are more less than what happened in United States. For example, terms such as Phreaking, Hacking, Worming, Phishing and Spoofing gives one the impression that these terms are used in the shipping industry. However, these terms are names for computer crimes that came into existence within the last 50 years or so. There are other computer crimes that had emerged within the last 50 years. They do not sound as strange but are nonetheless as damaging. They are: 3. i) malignant hacking; 4. ii) online fraud; 5. iii) disseminating malicious programs; 6. iv) online-pornography; 7. v) online-credit card fraud; 8. vi) defacing of websites; and 9. vii) denial of service attacks Malaysia in its bid to be technologically advanced has put into place its various national Information Communication and Technology (ICT) projects such as the Multimedia Super Corridor and the various technology parks to promote the use and development of ICT. Such promotion will result in a widespread use of the Internet and the Internet culture. It is submitted that Malaysia must have up-to-date laws to effectively deal with the cybercrimes that comes along with the Internet. To this end, Malaysia must constantly check and conduct measurements to determine the use utility of its current laws to combat cybercrime. One cannot deny that the online environment cannot and will never be rid of cybercrimes due to the Internets unique architecture.

International Cybercrime Laws The Council of Europe had in late 2001 adopted its Convention on Cybercrime Treaty (the Treaty). This treaty was signed by 30 of the Council of Europe members and 4 partner countries that include the United States of America, Canada, Japan and South Africa. This treaty provides for domestic procedural laws to investigate computer crimes and calls for international cooperation in investigating computer crimes. The effect of the Treaty is that any of its member country is to standardize its domestic laws to its requirements. Given the fact that the Treaty originated from the Council of Europe, such requirements in the Treaty may not be suitable to be implemented in countries that do not have similar legal systems and legal cultures. It is suggested that perhaps the rest of the countries in the world should cooperate through the United Nations (UN) conducted by United States of America to develop a treaty that provide all if not most of the solutions that crime enforcers face today when fighting cybercrimes. Such laws should be the minimum standard to be adopted by member countries, where in the jurisdictional issues appealed. Malaysia already apply this international law into what we called it Undang-undang siberact 14/9 to be use to provide solution. There were large-scale of differences between cyber crimes happened in Malaysia and The United States of America because of the large-scale of users in America is higher than Malaysia. The capacity of networking is the sources of why were The United States of America is the highest cyber crimes than Malaysia that are below 60 % off record. Even thought there is a huge scale between these two country but there are still with the same types of cyber crimes. The current laws and codes in Malaysia are to be amended. As was pointed out in Undang-Undang Siber above with the international cyber laws, there are indeed loopholes in the Malaysian legal landscape that have to be addressed. It is suggested that Malaysias amendments must take into account that its laws concerning technology are to be technology neutral. This is because of the fact that technology is fast evolving in the on-line world. Hence, the best way forward is not to entrench technology into the law but to entrench rules in cyberspace to protect Malaysians .

CONCLUSION Unlike conventional or street crime, cyber crimes are characterized by the computer genius of offenders (crime of the powerful). Computer criminals behaviours are motivated by greed rather than need, a motivation supported by selfishness and individualism inherent in the values of capitalist society. The capitalist framework which demands material success and profit maximization, coupled with the existence of certain loopholes in the corporate and legal structures, have led to a widespread of cyber criminalities in the last two decades. Although its extent and implications are serious, cyber crime has not been fully appreciated by the public. This, according to criminologists, can be attributed to the fact that unlike clear cut conventional crime such as murder, robbery and kidnapping, white-collar crime is seen as less harmful and not violent. There is some evidence that in the past, the public were indifferent to cyber crime. However, drastic rise of cases over recent years have prompted growing public and government concern about this menace. To combat cyber crimes effectively, an integrated approach is needed. The government, corporations, industry and public should share the responsibility. The police have always been playing a leading role in enforcement and have embarked on a broad-based strategy, including mutual cooperation with regional enforcement agencies in exchanging information and establishing networking and smart partnerships. On the other hand, in view of the growing number and seriousness of cyber crimes offences should be treated as serious crime, and that more prosecution and public punishment are required, to provide greater deterrence and to satisfy the interest of justice. Criminological research on cyber crime challenges simple explanations of criminality that look to poverty and social factors as causes and tells us a great deal about contemporary issues of enforcement and public policy. If criminology is to provide a firm understanding of crime and criminal justice system, the image of lower-class offenders (conventional criminals) must give way to a less reassuring view of criminality as a diversified form of behaviour that is found at all class levels, including cyber crimes offenders.

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