What is information crime? What are the characteristics of information crime?

Information crime refers to crimes committed against the normal operation of information systems or the information itself. In fact, the target is a crime against the normal functioning of an information system, the aim is still the information itself.

In the contemporary information society, especially today where information technology is increasingly highly developed, as a form of crime that is constantly being renovated and changed with the times, information crime has the following salient characteristics:

1． High intelligence of criminal subjects

Information crime is a crime of high intelligence. It is difficult to imagine that an illiterate or a person who knows nothing about the Internet can commit modern information crimes. First of all, most information criminals have considerable professional and technical knowledge and skilled operational abilities, and they must master certain science and technology before they can carry out their crimes. Because modern information systems generally attach great importance to security protection measures, very high professional skills are required to crack the security system and enter the network. Secondly, among the various means of information crime, whether it is directly or indirectly entering illegal instructions into a computer through the Internet to tamper with or forge other people's bank accounts, passbooks, credit cards, etc., to commit corruption, theft, fraud, sabotage and other acts, Whether it is illegally intruding into the network systems of national military and political agencies or enterprises and institutions, and stealing political, economic and military secrets, they all rely on high-tech means, and sometimes multiple means are used together. At present, some countries' important information systems, such as national defense and military systems, intelligence systems, financial systems, etc., have been attacked repeatedly despite taking extremely strict protection measures, which shows that it is simply impossible without high-tech methods.

2. Criminal behavior is highly concealed

First of all, criminals’ methods of committing crimes are very concealed. In the modern information society, since most information crimes occur in the virtual network world, criminals only need to type on the keyboard, click the mouse, and through invisible operations of programs and data without having to directly contact the criminal object, they can commit crimes in a short time. Complete the crime. Secondly, criminal consequences are difficult to detect. Due to the intangibility and large volume of information systems and data information, they can be easily copied and used without leaving traces. The electronic information itself will not be changed due to being copied. Even if it is stolen, the quantity and quantity will be reduced. There will be no change in quality, making it difficult for many crimes to be detected in time, such as viewing or copying state secret data files. Therefore, information crimes are difficult to detect and detect. Even if they are discovered occasionally after a few days or even months, I am afraid that the few "clues" in the first place have already been eliminated.

3. The time and space span of criminal behavior

In traditional crimes, time and space often play an important role, while modern information crimes are crimes that transcend time and space. Since modern information crimes are often committed through the Internet, and the coverage of the Internet is very wide, perpetrators have the conditions and time to find suitable crime targets on the Internet. They can log in to servers in different regions to cover up their whereabouts, and then carry out remote operations. commit a crime. Because the transmission speed of information is very fast, perpetrators can sit in front of a computer and carry out several harmful behaviors in a very short period of time.

4． The number of crimes is growing rapidly

Since the emergence of computer and Internet technology, information crimes have spread around the world at an alarming rate, and their development speed has even jumped in some developed countries. The rapid development of information crime in our country is also shocking. According to statistics from the public security department, various crimes committed using computer networks are increasing at a rate of 30% every year in our country. For example, since the first case of computer information crime was discovered in our country in 1986, 7 cases were solved in 1987, 20 cases in 1988, and more than 1,000 cases in 1993. The areas of harm have also expanded from the previous financial system to Securities, postal services, telecommunications, education, scientific research, production and almost all fields.

5. Diversity of criminal methods

With the development of information technology and the globalization of the Internet, the criminal methods of various information criminals have become increasingly diversified and high-tech, such as phishing, stealing secrets, and allocating funds. , financial speculation, software plagiarism, tax evasion, code theft, publishing false information, private decryption and intrusion into network resources and other information criminal activities emerge in endlessly and in various ways.

For example, phishing attackers use deceptive emails or forged URLs to defraud victims of their credit card numbers, account names, and passwords, etc., thereby defrauding them of money; they use color photocopiers to copy banknotes that look like real ones; they use laser audio and video recording technology to produce fake High-fidelity laser discs that are comparable to original audio and video sources; using telephone lines to connect personal computers to mainframes in global computer networks, etc., and these criminal activities are extremely convenient to operate. Moreover, with the development of network information technology and modern high technology, the criminal methods used by criminals will continue to increase, and the methods will become increasingly high-tech, which will undoubtedly make the detection of cases more difficult.

6. The complexity of criminal behavior

Due to the characteristics of information crime such as high intelligence, concealment, span of time and space, and diversity, the detection and conviction of information crime have become quite complex and very difficult. Criminals often have already thought of ways and means to evade attack before committing crimes, and they will also eliminate all traces of them after committing crimes, which undoubtedly brings great difficulty to the detection of cases. In addition, information crime itself is known as "invisible crime". Criminals can leave very few traces of crime. It is very difficult to discover this clue. Even if it is discovered, criminals have enough time to destroy it, because the evidence of information crime Most of them exist in software and are very easy to transfer or destroy. In addition, since the most fatal weakness of the computer system is that it "only recognizes passwords but not people", whoever has the password can operate it. To this end, criminals have forged a variety of false identities, which undoubtedly makes it more difficult to solve the case. Even after painstaking efforts to solve the case, due to the legal regulation of information crime, there are very few applicable laws, and even if there are, there are many loopholes. This undoubtedly gives criminals an opportunity to take advantage of the law and it is easy to take advantage of the law. This makes it very difficult to convict information crimes. Therefore, the detection and conviction rates of information crimes are generally very low. For example, in the United States, known as the "King of the Internet", the detection rate of computer crimes is less than 10%, and less than 3% of them are convicted.

7. The seriousness of the consequences of crime

In the network information society, especially in today's increasingly highly developed information technology, the harm and destructive power of information crimes are astonishing, far beyond people's imagination, and criminals carry out These crimes can sometimes be accomplished with just a few taps on a keyboard. Generally speaking, the direct losses caused by an information crime are dozens or even hundreds of times higher than that of an ordinary criminal case.