7 types of social media account fraud as per the itgovernanceusa.com

7 types of social media account fraud

Marika Samarati September 8, 2016

refer to

http://www.itgovernanceusa.com/blog/7-types-of-social-media-account-fraud/

Cyber crime has reached a new battlefield – social media platforms. Just as companies seek new opportunities to reach their target audience, so do cyber criminals. According to Proofpoint’s recent Social Media Brand Fraud Report, 19% of the 4,840 social media accounts associated with ten top worldwide brands were fraudulent.

Identikit fraudulent social media accounts

Carefully crafted, bogus accounts can be difficult to distinguish from legitimate ones. They replicate the brand account as much as they can, mimicking the logo, look and feel, and even content. The only difference is in what they propose to the audience: customer service at odd times, discounts, free gifts, and deals that are too good to be true. As the report says, ‘the only difference might be something as small as one character in the Twitter handle, such as @askmajorbank vs. @ask_majorbank’.

Although social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have implemented an account verification service – the blue checkmark badge next to the account name – cyber criminals have become even smarter and can replicate the badge in their background image to fool customers. However effective account verification is, it doesn’t extend to posts or tweets and fraudsters know this all too well.

The 7 different types of fraudulent accounts

The research identified 7 different types of bogus accounts:

Phishing accounts
These bogus accounts are replicas of official brand products and customer support accounts. They trick customers and users into revealing their account login credentials, credit card numbers and other sensitive information that will later be used to steal money. This kind of scam is known as angler phishing. Read more in this post >>
Malware accounts
These invite users and customers to click seemingly innocuous links that actually infect their devices with malware and ransomware. Fraudsters aim to obtain information stored on users’ devices in order to sell that information on the black market or even keep devices hostage in exchange for a ransom.
Scams
Through promotions and discounts, which are usually too good to be real, fraudsters collect the credit card numbers of inattentive users and customers whose greed blinds their ability to recognize that the deal is actually fraudulent.
Counterfeit accounts
By promoting knockoff or fake versions of famous brands’ products, these accounts damage brands’ reputation and image, and the quality of real offers, not to mention the customers’ trust. 11% of fraudulent accounts identified by the research belong to this category.
Advertising accounts
These fake brand profiles exploit brands’ identity to drive visitors to junk websites which then spam them with ads and adware.
Brand satire and protest
These fraudulent pages are created to generate hate speech, embarrass brands and threaten customers.
Pornography
Pornographers exploit brands’ popularity (based on number of followers) to distribute adult content and damage brand image and customer retention.

How to recognize phishing scams and stay safe

Spotting the bait might be difficult if you don’t know the different tricks and scams developed by fraudsters and how to recognize them. That’s why IT Governance’s Phishing Staff Awareness Course comes in handy. This elearning course provides you with the basic understanding and knowledge of what phishing attacks are and the different types you might encounter, and gives you tips and best practice to follow so that you can avoid the bait and stay safe and sound online. The course is taught through engaging activities and questions, and includes a final test to assess your understanding of the topic (which you can repeat until you achieve the pass mark).

The Cyber Effect by Dr. Mary Aiken

(refer to Dr. Mary Aiken book, The Cyber Effect: A Pioneering Cyberpsychologist Explains How Human Behavior Changes Online)

“We are living through an exciting moment in history, when so much about life on earth is being transformed. But what is new is not always good—and technology does not always mean progress.

We desperately need some balance in an era of hell-bent cyber-utopianism. In the prologue to this book, I compared this moment in time to the Enlightenment, hundreds of years ago, when there were changes of great magnitude in human knowledge, ability, awareness, and technology. Like the Industrial Revolution and other great eras of societal change, there is a brief moment of opportunity, a window, when it becomes clear where society might be heading—and there is still memory of what is being left behind. Those of us who remember the world and life before the Internet are a vital resource. We know what we used to have, who we used to be, and what our values were. We are the ones who can rise to the responsibility of directing and advising the adventure ahead.

It’s like that moment before you go on a trip, and you are heading out the door with your luggage—and you check the house one more time to make sure you’ve got everything you need.

In human terms, do we have everything we need for this journey?

At this moment in time we can describe cyberspace as a place, separate from us, but very soon that distinction will become blurred. By the time we get to 2020, when we are alone and immersed in our smart homes and smarter cars, clad in our wearable technologies, our babies in captivity seats with iPads thrust in their visual field, our kids all wearing face-obscuring helmets, when our sense of self has fractured into a dozen different social-network platforms, when sex is something that requires logging in and a password, when we are competing for our lives with robots for jobs, and dark thoughts and forces have pervaded, syndicated, and colonized cyberspace, we might wish we’d paid more attention. As we set out on this journey, into the first quarter of the twenty-first century, what do we have now that we can’t afford to lose?” (p. 303-304, The Cyber Effect)

“Forensic science is the study of the physical evidence at a crime scene—fibers or bodily fluids or fingerprints. In TV terms, think CSI. Forensic psychology is the study of the behavioral evidence left behind at the crime scene, what we like to call “the blood spatter of the mind.” Then there’s my area, forensic cyberpsychology, which focuses on the cyberbehavioral evidence … “Every contact leaves a trace” … This is just as true in cyberspace” (see p.6 The Cyber Effect)

“Special task force … arresting the biggest human trafficker in the United States and one of California’s “Most Wanted”…. team of experienced professionals pulled from the FBI, Homeland Security, Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC), the California State Police, and the LAPD” (p. 3 The Cyber Effect)

“Not long ago, I was invited to join the Steed Symposium panel on cyber-security at the Los Angeles Film Festival and found myself sitting on a stage with blinding lights, awkwardly perched on a very tall director’s chair… Next to me, perched on his own precarious chair, was a famous ethical hacker, Ralph Echemendia, a brilliant self-taught tech expert who had recently served as the subject-matter expert on Snowden, the Oliver Stone movie.” (p.278 The Cyber Effect)

“I most recently found myself spending a good bit of time in Hollywood, working on the television show CSI: Cyber, inspired by my work. In the show, Patricia Arquette plays Avery Ryan, a special agent in the FBI Cyber Crime unit who is tasked with solving high-octane crimes that “start in the mind, live online, and play out into the real world.” That describes my work perfectly.” (p.18 The Cyber Effect)

The comeback of cursive

Once derided as a relic of the past, handwriting looks poised for a revival

refer to the Article via

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21706459-once-derided-relic-past-handwriting-looks-poised-revival-comeback-cursive

PARENTS are not the only ones bemoaning the way so many schools have given up teaching children to write longhand. Researchers are also aware that more than mere pride in penmanship is lost when people can no longer even read, let alone write, cursive script. Not being able to exchange notes with the boss or authenticate signatures, for instance, can hurt a person’s chances of promotion. More importantly—and intriguingly—though, learning to join letters up in a continuous flow across the page improves a child’s ability to retain and understand concepts and inferences in a way that printing those letters (and, a fortiori, typing them on a keyboard) does not. It even allows insights gained in one learning experience to be applied to wholly different situations.

Neurophysiologists in Norway and France, for example, have found that different parts of the brain are stimulated when reading letters learned by writing them on paper, rather than by typing them on a keyboard. The movement and tactile response involved in handwriting leaves a memory trace in the sensorimotor part of the brain, which are retrieved when reading the letters involved. Being essentially the same for each key stroke, the feedback from typing lacks the kind of motor memories associated with individual letters. If handwriting reinforces reading, the implications for teaching are huge.

Similarly, researchers in America tested how college students performed when taking notes of a lecture by hand as opposed to using a laptop. While the laptop users took copious (mostly verbatim) notes, they fared far worse than the pen-and-paper scribblers when tested on what they recalled about the concepts and inferences of the lecture. Being slower, taking notes by hand forced those who did so to process what the lecturer was saying and then paraphrase it. This reflection and reframing allowed them to understand and recall the material better. In contrast, typing merely led to mindless processing.

In America, two developments have thrust penmanship back into the public arena. One is the reaction to the Common Core curriculum—a set of national benchmarks adopted recently by a majority of American public schools. This requires legible handwriting to be taught only in kindergarten and first-grade (ie, from age five to seven). Thereafter, the emphasis is on teaching keyboard skills.

The other, more subtle development stems from the way knowledge workers have lately become a good deal less desk-bound. As tablets and smart phones let people capture information while on the move or in the field, the bulky laptop is going the way of the portable typewriter a generation before. Meanwhile, the big strides made recently in software for handwriting recognition are rendering even screen-based virtual keyboards a clunky way of inputting data. One consequence is that employers hiring new staff are prizing the ability to write speedily and legibly in cursive.

As a result, a number of school boards in America have instigated a return to basics—especially time spent learning longhand. So far, more than half a dozen states—including California, Massachusetts and North Carolina—have made teaching cursive handwriting mandatory throughout their public schools. More than 40 other states are currently weighing similar measures.

The concern is over how best to encourage critical thinking, rather than how to help the young communicate. The problem is not that young people are writing less. They are writing hundreds, if not thousands, more words a day than they did a decade or so ago, says Anne Trubek in her recent book “The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting”. But this outpouring is done largely by pecking at a keyboard (real or virtual) rather than by pushing a pen across paper. Ironically, in the age of the mobile phone, chatting verbally over the ether has been superseded largely by texting, posting, e-mailing and social networking. Gone, it would seem, are the days of the inky-fingered wretch.

Not all that long ago, the penmanship taught in American schools was the envy of the world. The so-called Palmer handwriting method, adopted widely during the first half of the 20th century, relied on the muscles of the arm, rather than hand and fingers, to guide the pen across the page in a rhythmic, looping motion. In supplanting the slower and more elaborate Spencerian form of handwriting used in America from the 1840s onwards (see the Coca-Cola or Ford logos), the openness and simplicity of Palmer longhand let office workers match the speed of the increasingly popular typewriter.

While well suited for modern times, the Palmer method fell out of fashion in the 1950s. Educators deemed its regimented learning process inhibited free expression. The dogma of the day insisted children needed to be free to express themselves on the page as early as possible. The Zaner-Bloser writing method which gained favour instead taught first-graders to print in manuscript (ie, block letters) rather than learn to form cursive characters; only later would they be taught how to join the characters up into a continuous stream of words. Inevitably, the fad faded, as the burden of adding an extra learning stage took its toll. By then, however, the Palmer company had ceased to publish its landmark text book.

Certainly Ms Trubek is right about the impact technology has had on handwriting. The ballpoint pen is a case in point. Though the idea was originally patented in America in 1888, it was not until László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist, devised a thicker, quicker-drying ink in the late 1930s that the ballpoint (the eponymous “Biro”) became a practical utensil. Even then, it took a couple of decades more for the ballpoint to become cheap enough to rival the pencil, let alone the fountain-pen. Where the original Biro sold for the equivalent of $100 in 1943, the cost had plummeted to less than 20 cents by 1957, thanks to manufacturing improvements made by the French licensee, Marcel Bich. Billions of “Bic” pens and ballpoints from other license-holders have been sold over the subsequent years.

That is both good and bad. Being ubiquitous and essentially disposable, something to write with indelibly is almost always to hand. Unfortunately, the need to press a ballpoint into the paper to get the ink to flow—rather than having it glide like a nib across the surface—not only cramps the writer’s style but also tires the wrist and fingers, forcing the writer to adopt a more upright grip to alleviate the discomfort. Doing so, however, provides less control over the way the loops and letters are formed.

Gel- and water-based inks have eased the problem somewhat. However, by being free to move in any direction, the ballpoint (and its close cousin, the roller-ball) can never provide the “guidance” a relief nib offers through being more mono-directional. That is why, prior to the introduction of the ballpoint, cursive italic script had not changed much since Renaissance times. Whether the writer used a sharpened quill or a relief nib dipped in ink, it was the most comfortable and natural way to write.

Those who have cultivated cursive handwriting often exhibit two quite different styles: a carefully formed “fair hand” for composing formal letters; and a scribble for making hurried personal notes. The two styles may appear different, but either will identify the writer as one and the same person. It turns out that handwriting is as unique an identifier as a person’s fingerprints. Even identical twins who share exactly the same complement of genes have different handwriting. A person may make a passable copy of another’s handwriting, but expert analysts will spot the forgery at a glance.

What makes handwriting a unique identifier stems in large part from where the writer was born, the first language spoken and, of course, the handwriting method taught at school. Individual experiences play a role, as do childhood diseases. Children with ADHD, for instance, can readily be diagnosed from the random nature of their handwriting. Overall, the characteristics that make a script uniquely one’s own include the roundness or pointedness of the characters; their size, slope and spacing, as well as the thickness of the individual strokes. Two other identifiers are the pressure exerted on the paper and the arrhythmic pattern of certain elements. The two latter features are used widely in point-of-sale terminals to authenticate a person’s signature.

To Ms Trubek, a former professor of English at Oberlin College in Ohio, the disappearance of handwriting (or telephone conversations) from daily life does not necessarily signify a decline in civil intercourse. More likely, it denotes the end of one stage in the evolution of communication and the beginning of another—just as the Gutenberg printing press put paid to the livelihood of monks who produced illuminated manuscripts.

Digital ink may well be the Gutenberg press of today. This emerging technology (Windows Ink from Microsoft and Interactive Ink from MyScript Labs are good examples) uses machine learning and contextual analysis to recognise anything that can be written or drawn by hand on a touch-sensitive screen, and then turns it into digital form ready to be searched, stored, shared, annotated and edited collaboratively. The technology can handle free-hand sketches, mathematical equations, chemical structures and musical notation just as readily as cursive handwriting.

With nothing more than a tablet computer, digital ink lets users capture their spontaneous thoughts, as if doodling on paper. Though still in the early stages of its development, the technology promises to turn sketches and scribbles instantly into web pages, polished documents or anything else that needs to be published. Adding digital power to the ancient art of inscribing symbols on surfaces may, indeed, mark the next stage in the evolution of communication. If so, handwriting, far from falling by the wayside, would seem poised for prime time once more.

World Without Cancer; The Story of Vitamin B17

by G. Edward Griffin (Author)

Mr. Griffin marshals the evidence that cancer is a deficiency disease – like scurvy or pellagra – aggravated by the lack of an essential food compound in modern man s diet. That substance is vitamin B17. In its purified form developed for cancer therapy, it is known as Laetrile. This story is not approved by orthodox medicine. The FDA, the AMA, and The American Cancer Society have labeled it fraud and quackery. Yet the evidence is clear that here, at last, is the final answer to the cancer riddle. Why has orthodox medicine waged war against this non drug approach? The author contends that the answer is to be found, not in science, but in politics – and is based upon the hidden economic and power agenda of those who dominate the medical establishment. This is the most complete and authoritative treatise available on this topic.

Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle)

Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle) Hardcover – April 4, 2016

by Deepak Malhotra (Author)

Some negotiations are easy. Others are more difficult. And then there are situations that seem completely hopeless. Conflict is escalating, people are getting aggressive, and no one is willing to back down. And to top it off, you have little power or other resources to work with. Harvard professor and negotiation adviser Deepak Malhotra shows how to defuse even the most potentially explosive situations and to find success when things seem impossible.

Malhotra identifies three broad approaches for breaking deadlocks and resolving conflicts, and draws out scores of actionable lessons using behind-the-scenes stories of fascinating real-life negotiations, including drafting of the US Constitution, resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, ending bitter disputes in the NFL and NHL, and beating the odds in complex business situations. But he also shows how these same principles and tactics can be applied in everyday life, whether you are making corporate deals, negotiating job offers, resolving business disputes, tackling obstacles in personal relationships, or even negotiating with children.

As Malhotra reminds us, regardless of the context or which issues are on the table, negotiation is always, fundamentally, about human interaction. No matter how high the stakes or how protracted the dispute, the object of negotiation is to engage with other human beings in a way that leads to better understandings and agreements. The principles and strategies in this book will help you do this more effectively in every situation.

How to spot a liar

On any given day we’re lied to from 10 to 200 times, and the clues to detect those lie can be subtle and counter-intuitive. Pamela Meyer, author of Liespotting, shows the manners and “hotspots” used by those trained to recognize deception — and she argues honesty is a value worth preserving.

Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer (July 20 2010) Hardcover – July 20, 2010

by Pamela Meyer (Author)

Agility Shift: Creating Agile and Effective Leaders, Teams, and Organizations Hardcover – September 29, 2015

by Pamela Meyer (Author)

As contrary as it sounds, “planning” — as we traditionally understand the term–can be the worst thing a company can do. Consider that volatile weather events disrupt trusted supply chains, markets, and promised delivery schedules. Ever-shifting geo-political tensions, as well as internal political upheaval within U.S. and global governments, derail long-planned new ventures. Technology failures block opportunities. Competitors suddenly change their product or release date; your team cannot meet the pace of innovations in your market niche, leaving you sidelined. There are myriad ways in the current business environment for a company’s well-considered business plans to go awry. Most business schools continue to prepare managers to be effective in stable and predictable environments, conditions that, if they ever existed at all, are long gone. The Agility Shift shows business leaders exactly how to make the radical mindset and strategy shift necessary to create an agile, entrepreneurial organization that can innovate and thrive in complex, ever-changing contexts. As author Pamela Meyer explains, there is much more involved than a reconfiguration of the org chart and job descriptions. It requires relinquishing the illusion of control at the very foundation of most management training and business practice. Despite most leaders’ approaches, “Agility is not simply accelerated planning.” Unlike many agility books on the market, The Agility Shift provides specific, actionable strategies and tactics for leaders at all levels of the organization to put into practice immediately to improve agility and achieve results.

The Need For A Comprehensive Methodology For Profiling Cyber-Criminals

THE NEED FOR A COMPREHENSIVE METHODOLOGY FOR PROFILING CYBER-CRIMINALS

FADI ABU ZUHRI

Since the middle ages era, the definition of crime has been limited to types of crimes committed in the physical world. In the same way, theories aimed at explaining crime including the Conflict Theory, the Theory of Social Control among others have defined crime within the confines of the physical world. Strategies aimed at dealing with criminal activities have also been limited in their scope when defining crime within the context of the physical world. However, the growth of information systems, ICT, mass media, and increased interconnectivity facilitated by the internet has revealed a new and unique form of crime: the digital world crime. These types of crimes present several challenges including legal, geographic, and Web barriers as well as the anonymity of the internet. The environment in which these crimes occur also pose a create challenge to crime specialists. These challenges have created the need to identify and modify techniques used to combat crime committed in the physical world such as criminal profiling with a view to make them applicable to e-crimes. This paper discusses the possibility of penetrating these barriers by applying the modified version of criminal profiling techniques to e-crimes.

PROFILING CYBER CRIMINALS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Since 1970s, experts within the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) of the FBI have been helping Federal, local and state law enforcement agencies in investigating violent crimes. This practice was initiated the idea of offender profiling with a view to providing personality and behavioral traits of the perpetrator. It started as an analytical technique for identifying the characteristics of the offender based on the examination of the crime scene and crime dynamics and continued developing over years as a tool for investigation aimed at aiding security officers to advance their casework and narrow down a suspect pool (Alison et al., 2010). The offender profiling was offered within the BSU as analytical tool and a product of training programs.

Currently, forensic psychologists often employ deductive or inductive profiling in dealing with crimes committed in the physical world. They often apply these techniques to ascertain the characteristics of criminals in the physical world. Deductive profiling techniques involve the use of data including crime scene evidence, forensic evidence, offender characteristics and victimology. In deductive profiling, the available information is processed by applying personal experiences with the profiler assuming one or more facts of a case as self-evident about an offender or crime and then following hunches and work experience, arrives at conclusions. The “truth” of facts or conclusions arrived at using deductive profiling is depends upon the truth (i.e., contingent truth). Also, in deductive profiling method, the conclusions are true if the hypothesis and the premises are true and valid. On the other hand, inductive criminal profiles are created by studying statistical data including studying the demographic characteristics and behavioral patterns shared by criminals. Inductive profiling is also theory-driven and based on the available cases of crime. The inductive profiling relies on information collected through interviews with offenders and this forms the foundation for investigators’ profiles. Again, the inductive profile technique involves hypothesis (formalized operational definitions) for testing, the coding of data to allow for statistical analysis.

The applicable of these techniques has been possible in crimes committed in the physical world. However, the applicability of these techniques to deal with crimes committed in the digital world is still debatable. It has been argued that criminal profiling is an immature but promising science. Perhaps this may explain the little attention given to the technique by both the academicians and practitioners. In the digital world, forensic psychologists have the knowledge about the law, criminology and psychology and understand the technological aspects relating to the scene of crime in order to develop cyber-criminal profiles. As such, they are required to take an interdisciplinary approach when dealing with cyber crimes. Unfortunately, highlighted issues of tractability, geography, law and anonymity makes it difficult for forensic psychologists to collect any information about criminals and cyber-crimes (Tompsett, Marshall, & Semmens, 2005). Again, most cyber-crimes go either unnoticed or unreported and hence go unpunished. Importantly, it is possible to draw some parallels between non-cyber-crimes and cyber crimes. It is also possible to develop a profile from the existing techniques that can be used for law enforcement.

APPLICATION OF THE DEDUCTIVE AND INDUCTIVE PROFILING TECHNIQUES TO PROFILE CYBER CRIMINALS

From the perspective of the deductive profiling methods, cyber-criminal profile should be developed in a four-step process. The first step of the four-step process is the victomology. This stage involves understanding the aspects of organization and individuals attract cyber-criminals. Today, criminals victimize both organizations and individuals. This stage leads to and is associated with motive identification, which is the next step. Victimology helps the security specialists to understand the offender’s motive behind the crime. Victomology include the following: (1) politically motivated crimes (i.e., cyber-terrorists); (2) crimes committed driven by emotional reasons (i.e., cyber-stalking); (3) crimes committed and driven by sexual impulses (i.e., paedophiles); and (4) crimes known to be less dangerous such as sharing software by individuals, sharing copyrighted movies (Shinder, 2010).

The motives and victimology leads to the identification of offender characteristics, which is the third stage. Several topologies and ways to classify cyber criminals based on offenders’ motives have been introduced (Rogers, 2006). However, changes in the criminal behavior changes with the changing technological environment necessitating modification and reclassification of existing schemes. Other studies, have suggested that crime can be addictive and that in the cyber world, criminals become addicted to the internet and computers (Nykodym et al., 2008). It is also argued that this addiction, aided by various opportunities including the access and availability of the internet and computers, and fueled by criminal’s motives, could facilitate the making of the cyber-criminal. This understanding may be used in analyzing the modus operandi of cyber-criminal. Modulus operandi reflects cybercriminal’s character (Lickiewicz, 2011). For instance, a cyber-criminal may destroy information by using a virus that is attached to the e-mail while another may hack into a computer system by attacking the server with a view to steal information. This suggests that one’s technical expertise helps him or her to understand the behavior of cyber-criminal. A cybercriminal may be required to have level of technical efficacy in order to successfully penetrate a highly sophisticated and secure network (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). On the other hand, “script kiddie” may use an already developed program to attack a computer system. It is worth noting that human elements such as social engineering skills possessed by some professional cyber-criminals should not be disregarded. This is because cyber-criminals with average technical skills can participate in a crime by simply employing simple techniques of subtle psychological manipulations and friendly persuasion. Kirwan, and Power (2013) affirm that indeed technical skills and other skills including social skills and motives determine the modus operandi of cyber-offender.

The stage four of the deductive cyber-profiling technique involves analyzing digital forensic evidence. Digital forensic is important because it is the means through which the cyber-criminal profiler can trace the offender in the event there is no physical evidence (Kwan, Ray, & Stephens, 2008). In view of Lickiewicz (2011) not all criminals are traceable as one out of three cyber-criminals manages to remove or modify the audit trail by wiping off their traceable digital footprints. The four-stage approach that has been suggested is an iterative process. The new information regarding the offender, motive, victim, the victim and forensic evidence could be revealed while in the process of investigation.

As for inductive profiling methods, they can be applied alongside the deductive techniques described above to help deal with the cyber-crimes. For example, the statistical analysis data technique that involve studying the demographic characteristics and behavioral patterns shared by criminals and breaches in cyber-security could be employed to identify trends in criminal attacks such as the motive for attack, the type of victims who are likely to be targeted by criminals, and the most common mode of attack used by cyber-criminals. This may help in identify serial offenders and other cases with similar modus operandi.

CONCLUSION

The techniques and tools discussed in this paper are worth testing in practical scenario. It is believed that if cyber-criminal profiling would be used effectively, the issue of cyber-crime in cyberspace would be a forgotten issue. Considering the current trend of increasing rates of cyber-crimes, it would be important for academic and practitioners to collaborate. These practices may be useful for law enforcement officers as it may help them gather legally valid and binding evidence from cyber-criminals in order to take appropriate actions against these criminals.

REFERENCES

Alison, L., Goodwill, A., Almond, Louise, Heuvel, C. & Winter, J. (2010) Pragmatic solutions to offender profiling and behavior investigative advice. Legal and criminological psychology, 15, 115-132.

Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Cybercrime: Psychology of cybercrime. Dublin: Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.

Kwan, L., Ray, P. and Stephens, G. (2008). Towards a Methodology for Profiling Cyber Criminals. IEEE Computer Society. Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Lickiewicz, J. (2011). Cyber Crime psychology-proposal of an offender psychological profile. Problems of forensic sciences, 2(3): 239-252.

Nykodym, N., Ariss, S. and Kurtz, K. (2008) ‘Computer addiction and cyber crime’. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 35: 55-59.

Rogers, M. K. (2006) ‘A two-dimensional circumplex approach to the development of a hacker taxonomy’. Digital Investigation, 3 (2): 97-102.

Shinder, D. (2010) Profiling and categorizing cybercriminals. Retrieved on 6th July 2016 from http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/profiling-and-categorizing-cybercriminals/4069.

Tompsett, E.C., Marshall, A.M., & Semmens, C.N. (2005). Cyberprofiling: Offender Profiling and Geographic Profiling of Crime on the Internet. Computer Network Forensics Research Workshop.

Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child The Heart of Parenting

Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child The Heart of Parenting Paperback – August 12, 1998

by Ph.D. John Gottman (Author), Joan Declaire (Author), Daniel Goleman (Foreword)

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child is John Gottman’s groundbreaking guide to teaching children to understand and regulate their emotional world.

Intelligence That Comes from the Heart

Every parent knows the importance of equipping children with the intellectual skills they need to succeed in school and life. But children also need to master their emotions. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child is a guide to teaching children to understand and regulate their emotional world. And as acclaimed psychologist and researcher John Gottman shows, once they master this important life skill, emotionally intelligent children will enjoy increased self-confidence, greater physical health, better performance in school, and healthier social relationships. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child will equip parents with a five-step “emotion coaching” process that teaches how to:

-Be aware of a child’s emotions
-Recognize emotional expression as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching
-Listen empathetically and validate a child’s feelings
-Label emotions in words a child can understand
-Help a child come up with an appropriate way to solve a problem or deal with an upsetting issue or situation

Written for parents of children of all ages, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child will enrich the bonds between parent and child and contribute immeasurably to the development of a generation of emotionally healthy adults.

Cyber Crime Offender Profiling: The Human Factor

CYBER CRIME OFFENDER PROFILING: THE HUMAN FACTOR

FADI ABU ZUHRI

The process of offender profiling draws on the human factor of the cyber Crime Offender profiling both the nonphysical and physical information. This includes evidence on what the offender did to the victim, the offender’s behavior before and after the offence, the sequence of events, and the layout of the crime and crime scene in relation to the absence or presence of significant items or the disposition of the victim. From these data, one can draw inferences about the possible motivation and meaning of the particular action (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). For instance, tying up the victim may suggest the necessity for control. Location of crime, characteristics of the victim, and use of vehicles may suggest demographic and social feature of the criminal offender, such as age, occupation, or race. The goal of criminal profiling is to try and narrow the area of investigation with the basic assumptions being that the behavior of the offender at the crime scene reflects the method of committing crime and consistencies in personality of the offender.

In majority of criminal cases, criminal profiling is useful in sexual assaults and serial crimes and in crime scenes that reflect psychopathology including rapes, cut and satanic killings and sadistic assaults (Kirwan & Power, 2013). Worth noting is that the human factor of cyber crime offender profiling draws on the offender’s characteristics. Human factor means the impact of background and personal characteristics of the offender/perpetrator in commissioning crimes and the internal and environmental factors that shape the criminal careers of the perpetrators (Aebi, et al., 2016).

In a nutshell the human factor addresses the human or social aspect of cybercrime. It focuses on exploring the perpetrators of cybercrimes, their criminal careers, their modus operandi, how criminal hackers pick or select their vulnerable targets, and how they can effectively be deterred. This paper explores these features.

In the era where computer criminals are becoming increasing difficult to combat, law enforcement specialists are increasingly becoming interested in the offenders themselves, their personalities, as well as traits existing in their actions in the broadest sense. The special role of identifying the human factor of cyber crime offender profiling is often played by a psychological profiler professional. Psychological profiling involves utilizing a method to map the psychological description of the unknown offender (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). The result of the process is the creation of the offender’s short, concise and dynamic profile describing the most important manifestations of behavior and characteristics of the unknown perpetrator. As observed by Tompsett, Marshall, & Semmens (2005) psychological experience and knowledge allows the security specialists to interpret the pieces of information and evidence found at the scene of the crime and enables them to further determine the personality type of the perpetrator.

The basic rules of offender profiling state that there is a correlation between the act committed by the offender and his or her personality (Tompsett, Marshall, & Semmens, 2005). As a result, one may infer about the offender’s psychophysical characteristics including his or her behavior and motivation based on the traces left by the offender and the modus operandi (the method of operating). Identical relations concerns hacks or network attacks. As suggested by Lickiewicz (2011), computer crime perpetrators count on internet anonymity. However, the anonymity of the internet does concern their signatures they leave, their motivation, and modus operandi.

According to Lickiewicz (2011) each cyber criminal is his unique way of doing thing with own software and techniques which he/she utilizes for break-ins. Generally, compute crimes are of the serial nature. As such, it is possible for the security specialists to determine the profile of the offender. Lickiewicz (2011) holds that it is important to prepare the profiles of the internet criminals since they are considered a threat to the network security. Of great importance when creating the perpetrator’s profile is the database. If properly prepared, database on offender profiling can enable the security specialists to accumulate information on perpetrators of crimes of similar nature. It also enables investigators and scientists to search for information and analogies in other future cases.

There are two types of investigations in computer crime related cases. First, a situation involving the occurrence of the network incidences in which the identity of the offender is unknown such as the network break-in cases. The second computer crime case involves a situation in which both the offender and crime are known. Sahito, and Slany (2013) emphasizes that in these types of investigations, deductive profiling is useful. However, it is somewhat difficult talking about offender profiling in the second case of computer crime. In investigative psychology, profiling is understood as involving the creation of the psychological profile of the unknown offender but not the individual who has been already arrested by security agencies. Sahito, and Slany (2012) suggest that when creating the offender profile, data should be analyzed in such as way that the analysts can narrow down the search process to a certain group. This way, one may define the offender’s motivation and his or her skills. The offender profile also includes information the area of the internet that should be searched for a given criminal.

Again, one should thoroughly analyze actions of the victim on the internet to establish the reason that may have compelled the offender to attack the victim. From this, one can draw up a detailed offender’s profile and set up a honeypot (future trap) for the offender. When creating the profile of the offender, assumptions should be made regarding the offender’s maturity and age. This allows the security agency to gain information on the offender’s aims, culture she/he grew up and the offender’s motivation. The culture in which the perpetrator grew up may condition his or her behavior. This will allow the use of psycholinguistic methods, which enables identification of offenders in future cases.

Profiling helps explain the behavior of the offender and the need for it to be fulfilled. Profiling also enable an investigator to determine the place where the offender committed the operation. A whole team consisting of internet technology specialists, lawyers, and security specialists are required to conduct offender profiling.

A cyber criminal possesses the following characteristics: at least certain minimal technical skills; a feeling that they are outside the reach of legal norms, and disrespect for legal norms; rich fantasy; a strong motivation of various types including the need for entertainment, motives of a political character, and the need to gain material goods (Lickiewicz, 2011). Computer criminals are also reported to have high technical abilities and skills to solve problems and higher than average IQ (intelligence quotient); are brilliant adolescents bore by poorly prepared teachers and an appropriate school system; they rebel against all authorities and symbols.

Technical skills are general knowledge regarding computer systems, programming languages, network security and functioning and have knowledge about applications used for data base development. Hackers also know the operating system and principles of sensing data (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). Having knowledge in these areas enables hackers to make use of the system weaknesses of the system when breaking in. hackers are identified with certain personality traits. They have crucial characteristics that are effective for attacks. They use social influence or technical methods to obtain information directly from the user. They also demonstrate a high degree of openness to new experiences and neuroticism. These features strongly motivate them to aspire and act to break in the system. A high degree of neuroticism conditions them to abuse the communication using the network. It also makes them to have strong want to maintain anonymity. Also, openness to new experiences determines the offenders’ desire to learn need systems; and the unconventionality and creativity to break the security measures (Kirwan, & Power, 2013). They are known to have the high tendency to violate rules being enforced at the workplace, coming into conflict with superiors and ignoring them.

The offender’s social skills constitute a dimension that determine their functioning in a group and how the internalize social norms and use them in professional and private life. Social skills of the offender remain in relation to technical and intelligence skills. It is emphasized in the literature that hackers often demonstrate low social skills. These skills consist of difficulties in relating with colleagues ad family, the inability to establish strong and close interpersonal relations, and a sense of alienation. Computer criminals are also associated with internet addiction. This element makes them to be effective in their attacks on the system. The time they devote to computers translate into knowledge and skills to use them (Lickiewicz, 2011). These characteristics form the human aspect of computer crime and form the basis for creating the hacker’s psychological profile.

It is also worth noting that there is relationship between these human factor elements. For example, the cyber criminals’ method of attack is influence by their personality, and intelligence, technical and social skills. Social skills influence the decision they make with regard to the social techniques used during the attack. Technical skills possessed by offenders help them to master the system and influence the method used.

The success or effectiveness of an attack is determined by the criminal’s level of intelligence. The offender’s indigence and his or her ability to successful conceal traces at the crime scene condition his or her way of behavior while at the scene of the attack. Social skills are useful when utilizing other hackers’ help (Lickiewicz, 2011). Technical skills is related to the understanding the weak side of the system. They also determine the how the offender deals with the data obtained and determine the effectiveness of tasks executed. Methods used by hackers are largely conditioned by technical skills, personality and intelligence. The offender’s personality influences the break-in failure, and determines method used to deal with the broken system.

CONCLUSION

When profiling a person’s characteristics, the profiler of the offender assumes that the behavior of the offender is directed by his or her characteristics and the way he or she thinks. It is the work of the offender profiler to infiltrate the behavior of the person that is indicating of his characteristics rather the prevailing situation.

REFERENCES

Aebi, M., Bijleveld, C., Estrada, F., Getos, A., Kleemans, E., Levi, M., et al. (2016). Terrorism and Cybercrime: the Human Factor. The Position Paper. Retrieved July 5, 2016, from http//www.nscr.nl

Alison, L., Goodwill, A., Almond, L., Heuvel, C. v., & Winter, J. (2010). Pragmatic solutions to offender profiling and behavior investigative advice. Legal and criminological psychology , 15, 115-132.

Kirwan, G., & Power, A. (2013). Cybercrime: Psychology of cybercrime. Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin.

Lickiewicz, J. (2011). Cyber Crime psychology-proposal of an offender psychological profile. Problems of forensic sciences , 2 (3), 239-252.

Sahito, F. H., & Slany, W. (2013). Advanced Personnel Vetting Techniques in Critical Multi-Tennant Hosted Computing Environments. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications , 4 (5), 11-19.

Sahito, F. H., & Slany, W. (2012). Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and the Challenge of Balancing Human Security with State Security. Human Security Perspectives , 1, 38–66.

Tompsett, E. C., Marshall, A. M., & Semmens, C. N. (2005). Cyberprofiling: Offender Profiling and Geographic Profiling of Crime on the Internet. Computer Network Forensics Research Workshop.

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