Categorising cybercrime and cybercriminals: The problem and potential approaches |
Cybercrime is now recognised as a major international problem, with
Furnell SM
continual increases in incidents of hacking, viruses, and other forms of
abuse having been reported in recent years. However, although many people
may recognise cybercrime-related terminology, agreeing and defining what
they actually mean can prove to be somewhat difficult. As a result,
alternative classifications have emerged from a range of authoritative
sources, which are similar in some respects, but markedly different in
others. This paper considers the difficulty associated with categorising
cybercrime, and identifies that a harmonised nomenclature would be
beneficial to individuals and organisations concerned with combating the
problem, as well as to those concerned with reporting the issue to the
general public. The discussion presents a variety of different top-level
classifications of cybercrime, each of which has been utilised in practice
by authoritative sources in the field. The need for further sub
classification is then illustrated by examining the specific issue of
hacking, which reveals that numerous types and motivations can be
identified, and that the simple, yet frequently used, label of ?hacker? is
consequently inappropriate to convey any real impression of the activities
in many cases.