In Australia, as per the Australian Federal Police, the term ‘cybercrime’ is used to describe:
- crimes directed at computers or other information communications technologies (ICTs), such as computer intrusions and denial of service attacks
- crimes where computers or ICTs are an integral part of an offence, such as online fraud.
Cybercrime has also become an important issue for Australia and the global community.
Technological advances moving faster than most businesses and certainly the law can keep up mean cybercriminals have the capacity to cause harm to people from any location both inside Australia and anywhere in the world.
Cybercrime can include:
- malware, such as remote access trojans (RATs) which take control of your computer or devices, keyloggers and ransomware, which inserts a file or code to infect, explore or steal information over a network;
- phishing and spear (targeted) phishing, such as fake emails from a bank asking for login details and personal information;
- man-in-the-middle attacks, where the attacker secretly relays and possibly alters communications between 2 parties who believe that they are directly communicating with each other but in fact are not and information again is compromised;
- SQL injection, a common web-hacking technique that adds malicious code to a database, compromising its operation and security, often leading to leaks.