Online fraud and identity theft

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Fraud is described as wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. Online fraud can be defined as the use of internet services or software with internet access to defraud victims or to otherwise take advantage of them.

In other words it is traditional fraud, but with the internet as the means of carrying out the fraud.

Like its traditional counterpart, online fraud can take many forms. Action Fraud, which is the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and internet crime lists a total of 30 recognized types of online fraud.

These include: account takeover, advance fee frauds, bank card and cheque fraud, charity donation fraud, domain name scams, holiday fraud, internet auction fraud, mass marketing scams etc. Phishing is a form of online fraud.

Identity theft is a very specific form of online fraud. Identity theft is the crime of obtaining the personal or financial information of another person for the sole purpose of assuming that person's name or identity in order to make transactions or purchases.

Phishing emails are a common means of acquiring the details to carry out the identity theft.

Individuals can protect themselves from online fraud or identity theft by:

· Not giving any personal information to anyone before verifying their credentials.

· Not responding to emails asking them to click on a link and confirm bank details. Banks do not update data in this way.

· Destroying and preferably shredding receipts with your card details on or mail containing name and address.

· Making sure their computer has up-to-date anti-virus software and a firewall installed.

· Ensuring their browser is set to the highest level of security notification.

Denial of service (DoS) attacks

A DoS attack is an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a network resource from using that service. The classic DoS attack will come from a single computer sending multiple requests to that resource.

There are two general forms of DoS attacks:

· attacks with crash services

· attacks with flood services

Many DoS attacks exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. For all known DoS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused by the attacks. But, like viruses, new DoS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by hackers.

Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS)

It has become common practice for extortionists to target internet firms and threaten to cripple their websites with deluges of data unless they pay a ransom. These are known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and they overwhelm servers with requests until they are forced offline.

Computers from all over the world are innocently recruited to take part in the attack, each sending only a small part of the entire data flood. The recruiting of machines to take part in attacks is typically done by infecting them with a virus, Trojan horse or worm.

The IP address of compromised machines – called zombies or bots – is sent back to the criminal, who will use it to launch a DDoS. The network of zombie machines is sometimes known as a Botnet.

Ex. 2.Answer the questions.

1) What software is called malicious?

2) What does spyware do?

3) What is phishing?

4) What are software products from reputable companies, where you will be viewing sponsored advertisements until a commercial fee is paid, known as?

5) Which malicious activity is equally as dangerous for large corporations as it is for the individual user?

6) What is identity theft?

7) What should you do to prevent online fraud?

8) What is the name given to a computer on the Internet which has been compromised by a hacker with a view to be used in a DDoS?

9) What name is given to the group of compromised computers which are used in a DDoS?

10) Which actions are carried out on a compromised computer in a DDoS attack?

Ex. 3.Summarize the content of the paper.

Ex. 4.Speak about the problem of security in computer technologies.

Text 6

Ex. 1.Read and translate the text.

Internet of Things

Internet of Things is defined as theinterconnectionvia the Internet ofcomputingdevicesembeddedineverydayobjects, enablingthem to send and receive data: if one thing can prevent the Internet of things fromtransformingthe way we live and work, it will be abreakdownin security.

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature anIP address for Internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.

The Internet of Things extends internet connectivity beyond traditional devices likedesktopand laptopcomputers, smartphones andtabletsto a diverse range of devices and everyday things that utilize embedded technology to communicate and interact with the external environment, all via the Internet.

Examples of objects that can fall into the scope of Internet of Things include connected security systems, thermostats, cars, electronic appliances, lights in household and commercial environments, alarm clocks, speaker systems, vending machines and more.

As far as the reach of the Internet of Things, there are more than 12 billion devices that can currently connect to the Internet, and researchers at IDC estimate that by 2020 there will be 26 times more connected things than people.

Internet of Things (IoT)is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices. The term is closely identified with RFID as the method of communication, although it also may include other sensor technologies, wireless technologies or QR codes.

The IoT is significant because an object that can represent itself digitally becomes something greater than the object by itself. No longer does the object relate just to you, but is now connected to surrounding objects and database data. When many objects act in unison, they are known as having " ambient intelligence."

The Internet of Things is a difficult concept to define precisely. In fact, there are many different groups that have defined the term, although its initial use has been attributed to Kevin Ashton, an expert on digital innovation. Each definition shares the idea that the first version of the Internet was about data created by people, while the next version is about data created by things. In 1999, Ashton said it best in this quote from an article in the RFID Journal:

" If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things – using data they gathered without any help from us – we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best”.

Most of us think about being connected in terms of computers, tablets and smartphones. IoT describes a world where just about anything can be connected and communicate in an intelligent fashion. In other words, with the Internet of Things, the physical world is becoming one big information system.

Internet of Things (IoT)is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided withuniqueidentifiersand the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence ofwirelesstechnologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and the Internet.

Athing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with abiochip transponder, an automobile that has built-insensorsto alert the driver when tire pressure is low – or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned anIPaddressand provided with the ability to transfer data over a network.So far, the Internet of Things has been most closely associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing and power, oil and gas utilities. Products built with M2M communication capabilities are often referred to as beingsmart.

IPv6’shuge increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum, ” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address to every " thing" on the planet. An increase in the number of smart nodes, as well as the amount of upstream data the nodes generate, is expected to raise new concerns about data privacy, datasovereigntyand security.

Although the concept wasn't named until 1999, the Internet of Things has been in development for decades. The firstInternet appliance, for example, was a Coke machine at Carnegie Melon University in the early 1980s. The programmers could connect to the machine over the Internet, check the status of the machine and determine whether or not there would be a cold drink awaiting them, should they decide to make the trip down to the machine.

Kevin Ashton, cofounder and executive director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble. Here’s how Ashton explains the potential of the Internet of Things:

“Today computers – and, therefore, the Internet – are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50petabytes(a petabyte is 1, 024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.

The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy – all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things -- using data they gathered without any help from us – we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”

Internet of Everything (IoE) is a broad term that refers to devices and consumer products connected to the Internet and outfitted with expanded digital features. It is a philosophy in which technology's future is comprised of many different types of appliances, devices and items connected to the global Internet.

The term is somewhat synonymous with the Internet of Things (IoT).

IoE is based on the idea that in the future, Internet connections will not be restricted to laptop or desktop computers and a handful of tablets, as in previous decades. Instead, machines will generally become smarter by having more access to data and expanded networking opportunities.

Actual IoE applications range from digital sensor tools/interfaces used for remote appliances to smarter and more well-connected mobile devices, industrial machine learning systems and other types of distributed hardware that have recently become more intelligent and automated.

IoE features fall under two main categories:

· Input: Allows analog or external data to be put into a piece of hardware.

· Output: Allows a piece of hardware to be put back into the Internet.

The IoE term is driving much discussion about IT's future. For example, organizations like Cisco use the term in its branding to refer to the potential of modern and future technology.

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