International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 1, Winter 2019/2020 | Page 53

International Journal on Criminology
In the United States, a survey from November 2017 into the targets of cybercrime
(Javelin Identity Fraud Report, March 2018) showed that 6.6 percent of
American consumers had recently fallen victim to identity fraud, a rise of 8 percent
on 2016. Total damages of identity fraud perpetrated against all internet users
(including theft, fraud, compensation, replacement purchases and so on) amounted
to 16.8 billion dollars.
In the United Kingdom, known cases of online identity fraud have exploded,
increasing by 175 percent in the ten years since 2007, to a total of 175,000 in 2017.
Weaknesses: The Forgotten Human Factor
Fixated on the measurable, and with their screening and their high-level clearance
rules spreading like wildfire, Washington has forgotten the crucial human factor.
This much is clear from the inquiry into the theft of the NSA’s secret cyber weapons,
which reveals the damage done by an agency employee, a heavy-drinking
mythomaniac who, over a number of years, “borrowed” an extraordinary quantity
of secret files from TAO (see above). Measured in bytes, he had taken five times
the volume of ALL the works in the Library of Congress—the biggest in the world.
Documents were subsequently retrieved from hard disks found in the glove box
of his car (which he drove while drunk) and in the shed at the end of his garden.
For governments and businesses, the human factor plays a part in 28 percent of
attacks (2016 data). It is humans who cover up IT security incidents, who mastermind
phishing and malevolent social engineering attacks. And it is poorly trained,
negligent, or corrupt staff (known to criminologists as “rogue technicians”) who
facilitate cyberattacks.
The Huge Outbreak of Hacking on the Omnipresent Cell Phone
Hundreds of security faults and malware are being discovered all the time in the
Android system. After a lightning incursion, the owner loses control of their cell
and therefore of their bank and cryptocurrency accounts. These are emptied by
the hacker, who may also find compromising information or intimate photos with
which to squeeze blackmail money out of the victim.
Spectacular Recent Hacks
EQUIFAX: a credit and financial management company with around 840 million
customers around the world, of whom 91 million are businesses. In 2017, around
150 million customer dossiers were hacked: names, financial referents, address,
date of birth, passwords, security questions, all of their financial details, and so on.
YAHOO: all of Yahoo’s three billion email accounts were hacked.
US SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION: millions of the powerful
stock exchange regulator’s confidential emails were hacked, allowing subsequent
48