Cybercrime During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

6A South African Perspective on Cybercrime During the Pandemic

6.1. Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) was notified of a new coronavirus disease in December 2019, and by the end of January 2020 it had been declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” [WHO 20]. Identified as “Covid-19” in February 2020, over 2 million global cases had been reported by mid-April 2020, affecting nearly every nation [EUR 20, WHO 20].

For the purposes of this chapter, the definition of cybercrime used by Stalling and Brown [STA 18] will be followed: computers or computer networks are a tool, a target or a place of criminal activity. Given the prevalence of other “smart devices” connected to networks and the Internet, these will be considered as “computers” in the above definition. This aligns with the US Department of Justice categorization of cybercrime [DOJ 00]. Essentially a computing device or network can be subjected to malicious interference that has the potential to affect the normal functioning (computer as a target); computers and networks can be used to conduct criminal activity, and computing devices can be used as a passive storage device for illegal content [DOJ 00, STA 18].

The chapter investigates cybercrime activity during the Covid-19 pandemic from a South African perspective. There is disagreement to whether South Africa saw an increase in cybercrime as reported by van der Merwe [VAN 20a], or whether there was a shift in cybercrime tactics during ...