University XYZ, Phishing, & Legal Aspects
Since our sponsor university is located in Massachusetts, where there is no direct single state law on anti-phishing. It is important to understand legal phishing definition, and laws applicable if University XYZ faces any phishing attack. In this section, apart from explaining federal statute and related punishment for phishing attack, details are given on government agencies that University XYZ can approach for phishing attack investigation.
In legal terms, phishing is an attempt to acquire personal information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity through an electronic communication. First Anti-Phishing Act was drafted in 2005 to regulate phishing attacks, which did not passed. However it
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Other frequently used strategy is where attacker targets a specific group of audience to make the scam more real, and send email to trigger to immediate response.
Above discussed two strategies comes under active phishing method. Third strategy is more like a passive method where attacker creates a website looking similar to legitimate, and wait for victims that likely to trap when seeking the real website. In this case attacker did not send any email to trigger any immediate response from victims.
Many phishing scams registered that caused thousands of dollars loss to victims. Although phishing is common tactics used by criminals, there is no single federal statute that directly criminalizes phishing. Realizing this, many states have drafted law that specifically address phishing. California was first to implement state ant-phishing law 2005.
Below we explain which different U.S. federal statues are applicable to cover lawsuits against phishing attacks.
U.S. Federal Criminal Statutes applicable for Phishing
Even though not all states have anti-phishing law, this issue is covered under many other laws related to computers and internet. Similarly, phishing is addressed in federal statute under following laws:
- Identity Theft – 18 U.S.C. 1028(a)(7):
Under this section, knowingly unlawfully possessing or transferring somebody’s means of identification with the
The phishing email itself is also violating a law. This would fall under Title 18 Crimes and Criminal procedure, part 1, chapter 4, § 1028: "Fraud and related activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information”. While there has been attempts in the past to introduce and pass laws that specifically apply to phishing attempts none of these laws have made it on the books.
In December of 2013, a man was arrested for taking part in a phishing scheme. He was sending out fake emails to students that attended colleges around the U.K. The emails sent them to a site where they were supposedly supposed to update their student loans. What they didn’t know, is that excessive quantities of money were being taken from
Next, they will have to gather supplies, whether that be weapons, radios, or uniforms needed to carry out the task. Impersonation is a way to gather intelligence as well. Taking on the persona of a police officer or company employee to see activity within the target. Rehearsals are conducted to give a test run of the actual attack. This gives terrorist an idea of exactly how first responders will act once on scene.
legislation in the United States are mostly based on a state level. One federal law for example,
The Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (18 USC 1030) is legislation that was first enacted in 1986 to clarify the existing computer fraud law created in 1984 it helped to identify and speak to malicious code and hacking attacks. The legislation identifies what is consider a crime and were the line are between crime and code are. Even though the Act clearly details what is not acceptable, it falls short in today’s modern time. The act was constructed in a time well before the Internet was a force that everyone uses 100 of times a day. The Act can be broadly interpreted and can be
Some of the most common cyber-crimes are cyberstalking, identity theft, spam and phishing among others. Cyber stalking has been classified as one of prevalent cybercrimes with many internet users falling victims of cyber bullying. Cyber stalkers meet their victims in different ways; mostly they normally have a relationship either in the real world or online world. Cyberstalking starts when this relationship ends. However, strangers who have collected information on the internet can also be cyber stalkers. The desire to control and even harm their victims is what motivates cyber stalkers. They may go to the measures of personifying their victims and post messages or controversial posts on the boards and chat rooms. In this real regard, cyberstalking is a real crime (Mansourabadi, 2014).
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The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is in desperate need of improvement and reform. The act has been used to protect companies and people alike but has recently been abused multiple times. The lines between a misdemeanor and federal crime are nonexistent. In most cases murder is let off
What is cyberstalking? Cyberstalking is defined as " the use of the Internet, email or other electronic communications to stalk, and generally refers to a pattern of threatening or malicious behaviors." Meaning it would be unlawful for anyone to threaten to cause bodily harm to any person, person's child, sibling, spouse, or dependent. This also includes extorting money or other valuables and threatening to cause any physical damages to a person's
The internet has brought upon a new revolution of global interconnection where contacting someone on the other side of the world is just a click away, but with this international phenomenon comes an increased susceptibility with unfamiliar technology. Internet crime is compiled of all non-physical crime with the aid of a computer. Although broad in definition internet crimes are largely composed of acts such as cyber fraud, ‘phishing’ (username and password hacking), cyber stalking and hacking. Internet crime does not pose an overwhelming issue in society in terms of its
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Did you know that from 2005-2009 the internet scams rose from 100,000 per year to nearly 300, 000 per year (Internet Scam Statistics). From 2010- 2012 it continues to rise beyond 350,000 per year, with a monetary loss of over $300 million per year.