What is computer crime?

When people think of computer crime they usually think of electronic data theft, identity theft, and Internet piracy. But quite literally, computer theft can be as simple as someone stealing a computer.

A computer crime is any illegal action where the data on a computer is accessed without permission. This access doesn't have to result in loss of data or even data modifications. Arguably the worst computer crime occurs when there are no indications that data was accessed.
Computer crime is often attributed to rogue hackers and crackers, but increasingly organized crime groups have realized the relative ease of stealing data with relative low-level of risk. Government organizations are also rumored to be involved with hacking in to computer systems, but the legality of such actions is far too grey an area to be discussed here.
Many times, when a person thinks of a computer crime, he thinks of the damage that can be caused by unauthorized access to a computer by a remote user, known as a hacker. These types of computer crimes can be costly and damaging. Hackers who have access to computers can change, delete, copy, or damage data. For instance, should a hacker get access to a personal computer, he may have access to bank accounts and credit card numbers. If the target computer belongs to a major company or a bank, company secrets as well as worker or customer personal information could be at risk.
Another devastating type of computer crime is a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. In this type of attack, a hacker may first take control of several people's computers using a type of malware. Then the hacker sends a message to so-called zombie computers to send almost continuous requests to a view a target Web site. The Web site's server can only handle so many inquiries at once, so it either crashes or denies service to legitimate people trying to access the page. Thus, this attack can cause trouble for both the owner of the site and the person trying to view it.

Denying service to authorized users. On a modern time-sharing computer, any user takes some time and disk space, which is then not available to other users. By "denying service to authorized users", I mean gobbling unreasonably large amounts of computer time or disk space, for example:

1. by sending large amounts of junk e-mail in one day, a so-called "mail bomb",
2. by having the computer execute a malicious program that puts the processing unit into an infinite loop, or,
3. by flooding an Internet server with bogus requests for webpages, thereby denying legitimate users an opportunity to download a page and also possibly crashing the server. This is called a denial of service (DoS) attack.

section 33a of Republic Act 8792

(a) Hacking or cracking which refers to unauthorized access into or interference in a

computer system/server or information and communication system; or any access in order to

corrupt, alter, steal, or destroy using a computer or other similar information and communication

devices, without the knowledge and consent of the owner of the computer or information and

communications system, including the introduction of computer viruses and the like, resulting in

the corruption, destruction, alteration, theft or loss of electronic data messages or electronic

document shall be punished by a minimum fine of one hundred thousand pesos (P100,000.00) anda maximum commensurate to the damage incurred and a mandatory imprisonment of six (6)

months tothree (3) years;

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

ODREx is the office that caters with IPR concerns in VSU. The head of the office is Dr. Othello B. Capuno.