Cyber Crime: Are You A Victim?

AUTHOR: Rubbal, Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, New Delhi

Introduction

With the rigorous advancement in technology, especially the online medium is being promoted to be used a lot. We can see a shift from offline to online whether it be related from payments to schooling or working from home to just scrolling reels. We are online 24/7. With so much digital advancement, there is an increased risk of cyber security. Cyber crimes are on the rise. One can be a victim without even knowing with just a click. If we ask ourselves can we be the victims, the answer is most probably “yes”. So, do you feel safe using the internet?

What is cyber crime?

Cyber crime consists of a vast variety of criminal activities such as data breaches, ransomware attacks, phishing, financial thefts, hacking, threat to individuals digital security, cyber bullying etc. We came across many incidents about one’s social media account being hacked, fraud calls related to bank accounts, so many instances of cyber bullying. These are some of the day to day cases. But cyber crime is way more complicated than that. Cyber threats to many major companies and banks where we think we have our money safe are the biggest victims of cyber attacks.

Some of the recent cases were the AIIMS DELHI RANSOMWARE attack, due to which the server of the institute went out of order and the internet services remained blocked for several days. Many patients and their families faced problems because of it.{1}

The infamous Bangladesh bank heist case 2016, which was a highly sophisticated cyber attack on the central bank of Bangladesh. The bank was infiltrated with a malware called “SWIFT CLIENT”. The hackers sent transfer requests and the theft of 81 million dollars was made. It was a significant blow to the Bangladesh economy.{2}These types of attacks are a huge threat to the national security of a country.

Why are there such crimes?

Wars

Wars are one of the reasons for such attacks. Conflicting countries launch these cyber attacks to get access to each other's systems. For example, According to reports in 2024, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency launched a cyber attack against Russia’s ruling United Russia party. The United Russia party publicly admitted to suffering from a massive DDos attack.{3}

Money heist

Most of the cyber crimes are related to obtaining money, and the general public and the banks are the major victims of such attacks. Exploiting innocent victims to obtain money by threatening to publicise their private pictures, by hacking social media accounts to obtain money acting as the person who has been hacked. Hacking banks by infiltrating malware in their systems are some of the examples of cyber crimes.

Data theft

Crucial data that can be used to override a party or scientific data, secret government files etc, illegal use of these important files can cause severe damage to society. The NASA cyber attack 1999 is one such example. It was a major threat posed by unawareness of cyber security. The system was hacked by a 15 year old. It highlighted the vulnerability of the most secure computer systems.

Personal grudge

Sometimes these criminals commit such crimes just to take revenge

from the other party. Uploading private photos and videos on the internet without consent to make others feel small just for the sake of revenge is one such type of cyber crime.

Laws against cyber crimes

With Rapid cyber attacks, every country understands the need to provide legislation to deal with cyber crimes. In India, we have The Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, it was amended later on as Digital personal Data Protection Act 2023. These are the primary sources dealing with cyber security, data protection, and cyber attacks. There are some provisions in IPC such as section 419 and 420 which deals with fraud, section 465 which deals with the provision relating to punishment for forgery.

Section 65 of IT Act which deals with Tampering with computer source code,
Section 66 of IT Act which deals with using password of another person,
Section 66F of IT Act which deals with Acts of cyber Terrorism,
Section 67 of IT act which deals with cyber pornography,
Section 70 of IT act which gives power to the government to declare a computer resource as a protected system.

These are some of the important legislations in India.{4}

In The United States of America, there are laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA).
In South Africa, The Cyber Crimes Act 2021.
In Canada, The personal information protection and electronic documents act (PIPEDA), Criminal code of Canada.
In China, laws governing cyber crimes are: Cyber Security Law 2016, The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China.

These are some of the Legislations of other countries dealing with cyber crimes.

Conclusion

So to conclude this we can say even though there are cyber crimes like that and many people can be a victim of it but it is not something we can not deal with. We have proper Legislations providing punishments to the offenders of such crimes. Even though there are many day to day instances of such crimes, with little awareness and consciousness we can avoid being a victim. Just be aware of what sites you are visiting, being conscious while using the internet, using a two step verification system, reporting to cyber cells if seen a malicious activity etc. Cyber security is a threat which we can combat using robust defence strategies and awareness.