Computer Crime and Hacking
James Ciment · 2015
E very new technology has been accompanied bynew forms of crime, from train robbery to tele-phone fraud, and computers are no different. Storing vast quantities of potentially valuable information, computers have represented tempting targets for a new generation of criminals. Until the advent of the interconnected computer system beginning in the 1970s, referred to today as the Internet, computer crime was not all that innovative. A criminal would break into a facility where a computer system was installed, download the data (or steal the valuable equipment itself), often stored on computer punch cards or magnetic tape, and flee. It was not all that different from traditional breaking and entering. But once computers could be accessed remotely, computer crime became qualitatively different.