What Cybercrime Involves

Situation Analysis

Cybercrime can simply be explained as crimes carried out with the aid of a computer system. Cybercrime involves using computers and Internet by individuals to commit crime (Hassan, Lass & Makinde, 2011-2012). In 2018, at least 3.6 billion people had access to the internet, which has surpassed half the world’s population. (Maker, M., 2018-05-30).

Cybercrime is an unsophisticated term used to cover a whole range of different offenses and activities carried out by individuals, gangs, businesses and, in some cases, governments, with the aid of new technology.

For many, the phrase is simply an alternative to ‘computer crime’ – that is, any crime involving the use of computers, either as a tool of the crime or the intended target. But that usage is becoming increasingly outdated as cybercrime also covers any illegal activities involving the internet. (Warren & Streeter, 2013).

As technology is seemingly encapsulated into more aspects of daily life, cybercrimes evolve and varied, resulting in data intensive environments. Increasing smart-phone sales, increasing digital evidence requests in legal environments, the increasing generation and storage of digital transactions through the integration of the ‘Internet of Things’ (IOT), and the development of cyber-physical attacks all point to the broad societal impacts of technology.

The dangers of cyber-physical threats are evidenced by a recent attack on a German steel mill that destroyed a blast furnace. (Glisson and Choo, 2017).

Internet has its own disadvantages and one of these is called cybercrime, which is totally a widespread case in using the internet, it’s really frightening in any way, most especially to the ones who can’t really distinguish if the crimes is being committed through the usage of the internet.

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Cybercrime is defined as any illegal and criminal activity committed on the internet, including unlawful acts where in information technology is used either a tool or target, or both, in the commission of such unlawful acts. Any criminal activity that employs a computer either as an instrumentality, target or a means for the commission of other illegal acts also goes on within the range of cybercrime (Lavia, 2012).

Nearly half of all cyberattacks are committed against small businesses. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that a business will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 14 seconds by 2019, increasing from every 40 seconds in 2017. Ransomware damages are up 15X in the past 2 years. Ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations are expected to quadruple by 2020. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the BEC (Business Email Compromise) scam has seen an increase of 1,300 percent in identified exposed losses, totaling over $3 billion, since Jan. 2015. Cisco put the total amount of loss due to BEC — from Oct. 2013 through Dec. 2016 at more than $5 billion, and the losses continue to mount. A global survey conducted last year indicates two out of three people have experienced a tech support scam in the previous 12 months, according to the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit. Cyber criminals are creating an average of around 1.4 million phishing websites every month with fake pages designed to mimic the company they’re spoofing. The average size of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks is 4X larger than what cybercriminals were launching two years ago — and more than 42 percent of DDoS incidents in 2017 exceed a whopping 50Gbps, up from 10 percent of cases in 2015. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that newly reported zero-day exploits will rise from one-per-week in 2015 to one-per-day by 2021. (Steve Morgan and Herjavec Group, 2017)

In the year 2016, as the result of Global Economic Survey, the cybercrime is one of the economic crimes that were rapidly increased from being the fourth place to second place globally, which is fast to arise. The most damaging effect of a cyber-breach was viewed as reputational harm, followed by closely legal enforcement costs or investment. In targeting banks, the popular and effective strategy is through directing the email phishing to the clients. Mobile and online banking has opened new doors for cybercriminals, so for countering these kinds of attacks, banks started educating the customers on security. (Karim S. S., 2016)

This are the different samples of the developed application of cybercrime, first is the Cyber Crime Helpline which gives an open virtual platform to discuss the Computer Crime, Cyber Crime, e- Crime, Social Media App Frauds, Online Financial Frauds, IPR consulting and so on related complaints. Second is the Cyber Security App which is an informational app that helps people understand why cyber security is important. It gives in-depth knowledge of cyber security and its importance, the various types of cybercrimes and how to prevent cybercrime cases and last but not the least is the Cyber ??Police Bogura which is formed to keep cyber space free of crime. Cybercrime in Bangladesh is increasing day by day. The goal of Cyber ??Police Bogura is to bring all the criminals involved in these crimes under the law.With Cyber Police Bogura-CPB app, any individual victim of cybercrime can send complaint directly to Cyber Police Bogura.

Traditionally, in the Philippines crime and punishment are largely local, regional, or national. Through this, many crimes are committed not just cyber-related crimes, such as bank robberies, kidnappings, pickpockets, snatchers, using guns, and also theft is the most common crime, which is nationally the same. Today, many differences confronting the people are associated with the transnational character of cybercrimes. It is therefore important to have international legal instruments ready to serve anti-crime efforts. The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, officially (Republic Act No. 10175) which recognizes the vital role of information and communications industries such as content production, telecommunications, broadcasting electronic commerce, and data processing, in the nation’s overall social and economic development.

The State also recognizes the importance of providing an environment conducive to the development, acceleration, and rational application and exploitation of information and communications technology (ICT) to attain free, easy, and intelligible access to exchange and/or delivery of information; and the need to protect and safeguard the integrity of computer, computer and communications systems, networks, and databases, and the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information and data stored therein, from all forms of misuse, abuse, and illegal access by making punishable under the law such conduct or conducts.

In this light, the State shall adopt sufficient powers to effectively prevent and combat such offenses by facilitating their detection, investigation, and prosecution at both the domestic and international levels, and by providing arrangements for fast and reliable international cooperation. In relation to the RA 10175, its twin RA No. 10173 or the Data Privacy Act of 2012 was also passed in 2012 along with the agreements under ASEAN Vision 2020, which defined to protect the fundamental human right to privacy of communication while ensuring free flow of information to promote innovation and growth and the State’s inherent obligation to ensure that personal information in information and communications systems in government and in the private sector are secured and protected.

In addition, here are some of the cybercrime laws:

RA 9995 Anti-Photo or Video Voyeurism Act of 2009 – it did not distinguish the gender of the potential violators. Thus, if the woman or man who will do the acts of taking photo and recording video without the consent of the involved party in the future, RA 9995 will penalize both parties, even though the fact that she is a woman or a man.

In here the identity of the victim is protected. If a woman is the complainant, only the policewoman can handle the case. The picture or video must not be shown to any other people that no have business in the investigation.

Child Pornography or Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009– it was the unlawful or prohibited acts, committed through a computer system: Given, that the penalty to be imposed shall be (1) one degree higher than that provided for in Republic Act No. 9775 and punishable by this Republic Act.

The investigation cannot be divulged, like the name of the child. Only the policewoman can handle the case and the local police will request to any website where the video or picture are posted to take it down through letter or e-mail.

Online Libel (Sec 4 (c) 4 Republic Act 10175. — The unlawful or prohibited acts of libel as defined in Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, committed through a computer system or any other similar means which may be devised in the future.

In online scam cases, the local police will send a request to the remittance center where the suspect withdraw the money, the ID used by the suspect and its picture and video of the suspect being caught on cam or CCTV.

Computer-related Identity Theft (Sec 4 (b) 3 Republic Act 10175 – The intentional acquisition, use, misuse, transfer, possession, alteration or deletion of identifying information belonging to another, whether natural or juridical, without right: Provided, that if no damage has yet been caused, the penalty imposable shall be one (1) degree lower.

Cyber-squatting (Sec 4 (a) 6 Republic Act 10175). – The acquisition of a domain name over the internet in bad faith to profit, mislead, destroy reputation, and deprive others from registering the same, if such a domain name is:

1. Similar, identical, or confusingly similar to an existing trademark registered with the appropriate government agency at the time of the domain name registration:
2. Identical or in any way similar with the name of a person other than the registrant, in case of a personal name; and
3. Acquired without right or with intellectual property interests in it.

Illegal Access (Sec 4 (a) 1 Republic Act 10175) – The access to the whole or any part of a computer system without right.

According to the Department of Justice – Office of the Cybercrime, in the Philippines, the statistics show that from January to December 2016, the DOJ-OOC, National Bureau of Investigation – Cybercrime Division (NBI-CCD0, and Philippine National Police – Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG), received a total of three thousand nine hundred and fifty-one (3,951) complaints for cybercrime and cyber-related offenses. This is 53.92% higher than the number of complaints received last year, which totaled to two thousand five hundred and sixty-seven (2,567).

Eight hundred thirty (830) complaints received by the relative law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in 2016 pertain to computer-related offenses under Section 4 (b) of the Cybercrime Law. This category includes “E-mail Spoofing” and “Phishing”, which are considered as computer-related forgery and computer-related fraud, respectively.

Content-related Offenses Under Section 4 (c) of the Cybercrime Law, cybersex, child pornography, and libel are categorized as content-related offenses. In 2016, a total of six hundred forty (640) complaints were received by the respective LEAs, with libel as the most complained about offense. Treated separately, but under the same category, are the NCMEC Reports concerning OCASE, which were received by the DOJ-OOC in 2016. (Department of Justice – Office of Cybercrime, May 2017)

According to the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP ACG), a total of 1,211 cybercrime complaints were filed with them from 2013-2015. The top five complaints received were online scams (366), online libel (240), online threats (129), identity theft (127), and photo and video voyeurism (89).

There are 44 million Internet users in the Philippines as of 2014, said the PNP ACG, citing digital discovery engine Fact browser. The users spend an average of 18.6 hours per week (around 2.6 hours per day) online. The PNP ACG also released a list of Do’s and Don’ts that Internet users need to keep in mind while they surf the Internet to avoid being victimized. (Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group, August 2015)

As cybercrime arises, there is always a common scenario or cases that might happen, just like in online scam. The local police will wait the respond from the remittance center for the identification of the possible suspect, like ID represented during the withdrawal of the money and also the video of the suspect being captured using video camera or CCTV.

The length of the file cases against cybercrime will always be depend from the victim and the evidence gathered, first the local police will interview the complainant to verify the complaint, second look for the evidence and save it, so that at end of the day it will eventually use for further investigation.

In designing, developing, and implementation of the study, the researchers will used specific technologies like laptops for designing the user interface of the develop system, also mobile or android phones to test if the develop system or application will work properly when building the application.

The agency-in-charge in conducting cyber related crimes here in La Union is the Regional Anti-Cybercrime Unit 1 (RACU 1) located at Camp B Gen Oscar M Florendo Parian, City of San Fernando, La Union.

In general, the cybercrime is not a new phenomenon in different country around the globe today. It implies that, the study is very important to avoid being a victim who always using any kind of technology and through accessing the internet. This will be applied to help and easily report complaints of such activities. This study is an innovation which suggest that incorporate a high degree of cooperation and integration to fight cybercrimes, with the help of this application, it would lead us to enhance the ability of being brave and not to be afraid at all times, to report a crime.

Statement of Objectives

The study focuses on the development of a mobile application that intends to simplify the reporting of cyber related crimes and systematize the process of responding to complaints. It will also provide relevant information and tips on cyber security and privacy.

Specifically, it has the following objectives:

To determine the existing processes in reporting cybercrimes and needs of the complainant;

To develop a cybercrime reporting application using Extreme Programming (XP) Model; and

To determine the level of acceptability of the CY-COP: A Mobile Application to Report Alleged Cybercrime Cases. In terms of:

• Functionality,
• Usability,
• Efficiency,
• Maintainability and
• Portability.

Time and Place of Study

The research study will be conducted at College of Information Technology, Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University Mid La Union Campus, Catbangen, City of San Fernando, La Union during the second semester of School Year 2018 – 2019.

Definition of Terms

Cybercrime is defined as a crime in which a computer is the object of the crime (hacking, phishing, spamming) or is used as a tool to commit an offense (child pornography, hate crimes). Cybercriminals may use computer technology to access personal information, business trade secrets or use the internet for exploitative or malicious purposes. Criminals can also use computers for communication and document or data storage. Criminals who perform these illegal activities are often referred to as hackers.

CY-COP: A Mobile Application to Report Alleged Cybercrime Cases is the term used to simplify that the complainant or maybe just a ordinary people living in the area should actually report any cyber-related crimes, where the said activities was occurred, regardless of being a victim or not.

Level of Acceptability refers to the methods of measuring convenience and the practicality of use of the system that was developed. This creation is based upon the IOS / IEC 9126 instrument. This is the instrument for International Organization of Standardization (ISO) which is used to evaluate the acceptability of the CY-COP: A Mobile Application to Report Alleged Cybercrime Cases. The acceptability instrument covered six indicators such as functionality, reliability, usability, efficiency, maintainability and portability.

Functionality refers to the capability of the software to provide functions which implies needs of users specified conditions of usage. Functionality of the software should provide a useful, time-saving, and acceptably accurate solution to a specified task or problems. It should be tested with a wide range of datasets with several trial users and should be stable and predictable in its behavior. The user interface must be effective in explaining to the user, the requirements, and describing the sequence of calculations (Clarke 2010).

Reliability refers to the capacity of the software to maintain its service provision under defined conditions for a stated period of time. Reliability of combined hardware and software systems requires implementation of a thorough and combined set of reliability demonstrating, allocation, prediction, approximation and test tasks. These tasks permit on-going assessment of the reliability of the system. The results of these analysis are used to evaluate the relative value of competing design replacements, to assess the reliability growth of the design program, and to measure the final, accomplished product reliability through validation testing (Lakey 2012).

Usability refers to the capability of the software to be understood, learned, used and provides visual appeal, under specified conditions of usage. Usability is an excellent attribute that measures how easy user interfaces are to use. “Usability” also refers to procedures for improving ease-ofuse through the design process. It is a necessary condition for survival on the web. If a web is difficult to use, people leave. There’s no such thing as a user reading a software manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface (Neilsen 2010). Efficiency is related with the system properties used when providing its required functionality. Efficiency is a measure of method correctness. In other words, things should be done right. Efficiency’s impact is usually measured at least at one of three levels – corporate-wide, department, or individual. Questions related to efficiency are primarily directed toward the impact that any solution must have on the environment.

For example, “How can the operations in the office be improved by this system?” and “What values can be added to the environment by using an automated solution to the problem?” are two questions that the analyst can ask in this subject area (Mangaoang 2013). Maintainability refers to the ability of the system to identify and fix fault within a software component. Maintainability also defines as the chance that a given maintenance act for an item under given usage situations can be performed within a specified time interval when the maintenance is performed under stated circumstances using stated procedures and resources (Tortorella 2015).

Lastly, portability which refers to the capability of the software to transfer from one environment to another and its ability to adopt changes in its environment or with its requirements.