Title: What is Cybercrime? - Definition from Techopedia
Headings: Cybercrime
Cybercrime
What Does Cybercrime Mean?
Techopedia Explains Cybercrime
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Content: Cybercrime may also be referred to as computer crime. Advertisement
Techopedia Explains Cybercrime
In a very general sense, cybercrime can be split into two fundamental types—the type in which criminals target networks, and the type in which people commit criminal acts by using computing systems. Another way to talk about this is that the complexity of cybercrime has grown along with the complexity of computing systems. In the 1980s, cybercrime would most likely involve representing fraudulent data on a workstation or simple network, or hacking a network to achieve criminal outcomes. Nowadays, the scenery of the cybercrime world is much more complex. One type of cybercrime involves data breaches where hackers and black hat operators compromise the privacy of sensitive data assets. Then there are various types of crimes where cyberattacks target networks to shut down various mission-critical computing operations maintained by governments or businesses. The phenomenon of cyberwarfare applies wherever a nation targets another nation’s networks or their proxies. In the “other world” of cybercrime, where computers are used to pursue criminal activities, there's a wide gamut of criminal operations that apply, ranging from using computers for sex trafficking or fraud to using computers to direct systems that can harm people physically. Because the power of computers has become so broad, the nature of cybercrime has evolved accordingly.