Is Cyber-Crime a New
Phenomenon?
Andy is an independent information
security advisor and consultant, who
has worked in the field since the mid-
1980s. He has undertaken a variety of
security-related assignments during
his career in the Royal Navy and
subsequently in his consultancy work.
Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-130-9 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Andy Taylor
Abstract: The crime of theft has been around for as long as man
has lived in communities. Cyber-crime is seen, though, as a new
crime being committed, whereas it is really the way the crime
is perpetrated that has changed. Those committing cyber-crime
are not the usual type of criminal and in a world where cyber-
security skills are desperately needed, perhaps we can punish the
cyber-criminal in a way that is of more use to society.
Keywords: Career development, criminals, criminal reform,
cyber-crime, cyber-criminals, cyber-security profession, educa-
tion system, philosophy, punishment
Introduction
While the obvious answer to the question posed above is
a clear and definitive yes, there is some merit in consid-
ering this issue in rather more detail. Firstly, the main
reason it is perceived almost universally as a new phe-
nomenon is because of the term cyber. This term has
come into common parlance in the last few years, with
other terms such as Internet-enabled, Internet-based,
and similar being used prior to that. The term cyber
has derived primarily from cyberneticsa term coined
in 1948 by a US mathematician Norbert Wiener and
coming from the Greek kybernetes, meaning steersman
or governor.1 Cybernetics is mainly used to describe
the automated control mechanisms that have become a
major part of the fourth industrial revolution.
Secondly, crime itself has been around more or less
for as long as there has been civilization on earth. While
this might be difficult to prove categorically, one crea-
ture stealing something from another is seen in the
more advanced animal kingdoms and so it is reasonably
safe to assume that early humans did it tooand that it
continues today.
1
Dictionary.com cyber, in Dictionary.com Unabridged. Source
location: Random House, Inc. http://www.dictionary.com/
browse/cyber. Available: http://www.dictionary.com/. Accessed:
July 5, 2017.
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 Is Cyber-Crime a New Phenomenon?
Is it, therefore, fatuous to ask the above
question and is there any point in consider-
ing it? The proposal is, however, that while
the crime itself is not new, the way it is
perpetrated is, and this seems to give it a
new lease of life and importancerightly
or wrongly. It is also apparent that some
people do wrongly believe cyber-crime
to be a new form of crime. Indeed, it has
been suggested in some quarters that the
way to deal with the criminals carrying
out such cyber-crime should be different
from the way in which other criminals are
dealt with.
What Is Cyber-Crime?
As has been said, cyber-crime is not new
but it is clearly different in some way
from the crimes of the past. The key dif-
ference is the way in which it is c arried
out. In simple terms, cyber-crime is often
defined as criminal activity that involves
the Internet or other computer-based sys-
tem, network, or facility.2 This definition
immediately makes it clear that it is
the process used to commit the crime
that is the cyber element and not the
crime itself.
The committing of crime, its detec-
tion, and eventual resolution have been
facilitated by a number of technological
inventions over the years, one of the more
interesting crimes being the capture of a
murderer by the UK authorities in 1910. This
was the capture of the American Dr.Crip-
pen who was later convicted of the murder
of his wife Cora. The ships C
aptain sent a
telegraph to the British authorities when
Crippen was identified traveling on a ship
from Europe to Canada, at that time still
a British Dominion. A British p olice Chief
Inspector took a faster ship and arrived in
2 introduced in the 1400s so it is perhaps not
Dictionary.com cybercrime, in Dictionary.com
Unabridged. Source location: Random House,
Inc. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cyber-
crime. Available: http://www.dictionary.com/.
Accessed: July 5, 2017.
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-130-9 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
time to arrest Crippen before he disem-
barked from the ship. This was the first use
of the telegraph in criminal history.
A Historical View
Crimes committed in the past were usu-
ally related in some form to depriving
the lawful owner of something, or, in
other words, theft. In the dim and dis-
tant past, this might have been the steal-
ing of food, animals, and perhaps hunting
grounds. It is also highly likely that the
theft of information went on: where the
best hunting grounds were, where there
was fresh water, the best source of berries,
and so on. This sort of information would
have been for the privileged, owned by
the e lders of tribes, passed down through
the generations by word of mouth or per-
haps in song.
As humans developed into a more
civilized being, the crime of theft contin-
ued, with the quantification of value b eing
added into the mix. If something was per-
ceived to be of higher value, it was seen
as the better item to steal. The chances
were that if a man stole another mans best
cow, as distinct from just one of the herd,
he would probably be seen as better, and
gain not only an extra cow but prestige and
notoriety as well.
As life rolled on through the centuries so
did the crime. The items stolen changed as
different things became more valuable and
hence more worth stealing. The follow-on
activities, after the theft, also developed.
Instead of stealing just to gain personal ben-
efit, the concept of selling on and theft to
order became more common. It was prob-
ably about this time that professional gangs
of thieves became very common.
The theft of identity is less easy to
track. Passport-type documents were first
unreasonable to assume that establishing
ones identity was important then and has
only become more so. Perhaps the most sig-
nificant issue in the early days of identity
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 Is Cyber-Crime a New Phenomenon?
problems was actually being able to prove
conclusively who you were. Without iden-
tification cards, passports, or the like, it
was very difficult to prove identity other
than taking one persons word for who
they were. This gave rise to the documen-
tation with which we all are quite familiar
today. Stealing another persons identity
is, therefore, not a new phenomenon but
the reasons and benefits of doing so have
become more significant in the last half
century or so. The advent of credit facili-
ties for the general population has incen-
tivized thecriminal to acquire credit cards
and the like in the name of an unsuspect-
ing victim and to take advantage of their
credit facilities. The theft of identification
documentation, some of it very basic such
as letters addressed to an individual, has
now become commonplace and is per-
fectly adequate to establish an identity and
to use it for n efarious purposes. The theft
of online identities is also growing rapidly
and should be giving each and every one of
us cause for concern.
A third major area of crime has been
the selling of fraudulent, illegal or non-
existent goods. Examples range from the
standard illegal drugs trade through to
the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme of the
early 1990s where intelligent people were
duped into making bad investments. It
was possible to commit these crimes
owing to the trust people placed in other
individuals. The skilled fraudster would
be able to convince people they met to
do things which, when viewed in the cold
light of day, were clearly foolish or illegal.
Financial transactions of old usually left
trails and, where goods were involved,
these needed to be transported covertly
as well as ensuring payment, often in
cash, was made to the supplier. Altogether
these frauds were not too easy to set up
and usually required significant personal
investment in order to gain the necessary
credibility, reputation, and collateral for
them to succeed.
Business Expert Press 978-1-94744-130-9 (2018)
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The Introduction of the Internet
From its early beginnings, the main
driving force behind the connectivity of
computer systems has always been the
facility of sharing information. Privacy and
confidentiality were never really a major
consideration of Sir Tim Berners-Lee or
any of those who joined him in the devel-
opment of the Internet. This has therefore
opened the way for the theft of informa-
tion via the Internet. The motivations are
many and varied but at the root of most is
finance. The prospect of gaining money
with the minimum of effort and, perhaps
more importantly, relatively little chance
of detection and being brought to justice is
just too great to be i gnored, not only by the
organized criminal gangs, but also by the
youngster new to the world of crime.
It is now widely accepted that the crimi-
nal world makes more money out of the
trade in stolen information than they do
in the lucrative illegal drugs trade. This
is not surprising since huge amounts of
information stored electronically can be sto-
len, copied, shared, moved, and destroyed
in milliseconds. Compare this with the
need to obtain paperwork physically, to
photocopy, or, before that, to transcribe the
information by hand. The chances of b eing
caught are also very different. Skillful
thieves can download large quantities of
data without the rightful owner having any
idea that it is going on, as the hack of Sony
in 2014 showed. Sony only realized they
had lost their data when the criminals told
themhardly an ideal situation.
Perhaps the more significant change in
the criminal world though is the increase
in those who fall into the illegal world of
information theft and misuse, through
their ability to attack software and all its
vulnerabilities. In the past youngsters with
a desire to try a bit of criminality were
largely restricted to the opportunistic theft
of sweets from the local shop, perhaps
grabbing a ladys bag as she fumbled with
her shopping, or similar. The chances of
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