Cyber Operations

13Cyber Crime Effects

13.1 Criminal Cyber Effects

In Chapter 3, we differentiated between the use of cyber to perform conventional crime and the tailoring of cyber methods to perform cyber‐specific crime. In addition, in Chapter 9, we discussed how computer viruses used new technologies to produce unforeseen mayhem. For example, the Jester worm dialed into the Bell Atlantic computer system, via modem, and knocked out systems that managed phone and radio communications for the air traffic control tower at Worcester Airport, as well as phone service for 600 homes in the area in 1997. Similarly, a rogue engineer used the controls in a water treatment facility to dump 265,000 gallons of waste into Maroochy Shire, Australia, to protest being laid off from his job in 2000. And the Sobig virus infected CSX, which operates rail systems for passenger and freight trains in 23 U.S. states, and as a result of the infection stopped signals going out, caused trains running between Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and in the DC Beltway, to stop (Hancock, 2003). Cost estimates for the Sobig virus run into the billions of dollars (Vigderman, 2022).

Each of these early attacks, while criminal, was the work of hackers with limited organizational support. Criminal effects both grew and became more organized over the second decade of the 21^st century. For example, records theft was originally performed for the value of the data. However, data exfiltration caused the data thief extra work in the ...