CISSP Training Kit

Computer crimes

They do it for many reasons. In the early days, they did it for fun, for the challenge of it all, and for the bragging rights that came with a successful exploit. Later on, it began to evolve toward doing it to get even on a grudge of some kind or to make a political statement, referred to as hacktivism. Today, the stakes have risen substantially. Most computer crimes are professionals, well sponsored and supported by organized crime, corporations, or even governments. A recent survey estimated more than $400 billion USD in losses in 2012 due to global cybercrime (see http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/9319/cyber-crime/ponemon-statistics-2012-on-cost-of-cybercrime.html).

Historically, attackers would distribute their malware to ...