THE CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE

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• THE CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE A POSSIBLE SOLUTION
• THE CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE OF THE E-CRIME
  CRIMINAL AND EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES DR ALICE
  MAREE
• A TASK TEAM E-CRIME COUNTERING STRATEGY JAC
  SPIES

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• THE CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE OF THE
• E-CRIME CRIMINAL
• EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES
• Dr Alice MAREE
• 011 8473159
• alicem_at_sabric.co.za

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STRUCTURE OF PRESENTATION

• Historical background of criminological profiling
• Different types of profiles
• A criminological profile of the e-crime criminal
• Emerging opportunities for E-crime

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HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• Lombroso - He compared information such as race,
  age, sex, physical characteristics, education and
  geographic region about similar offenders.
• Kretschmer - He classified and labeled criminals
  according to body type, personality type and
  criminal potential.
• Taylor - The earliest hacker profiles was
  compiled before 1990

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DIFFERENT TYPES OF PROFILES

• THE CRIMINAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE (FBI
  BEHAVIORAL LABORATORY AT QUANTICO)
• Soft-evidence profiling
• Hard-evidence profiling
• CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE
• Individual perspective
• Social context
• Criminal event

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CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILING

• This profile is developed by criminologists.
• The following skills are needed
• sound knowledge of criminology
• knowledge of psychology such as issues of
  personality traits and temperament
• knowledge of sociology focusing on relevant
  social issues such as poverty, unemployment,
  collective and deviant behaviour
• intensive research on crime and criminal behaviour

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• A CRIMINOLOGICAL PROFILE
• OF THE
• E-CRIME OFFENDER

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT

• Biological
• There is no indication of biogenetic or
  psychological deviancies
• Normal personality type
• More skinny than fat
• Tans are rare

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT

• Psychodynamic
• Crave attention and peer recognition from other
  hackers or friends
• Low self-esteem (self assurance surfaces only
  when with other (hackers/crackers) talking about
  computers

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT

• Cognitive
• They perceive themselves to be intelligent, but
  poor achievers in school.
• Tend to be easily frustrated by their school or
  work situation if it is not challenging enough
  for them
• Technically skilled
• Fairly clever
• Reasonably to highly skilled in computers

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT

• Rational decision making
• They do not consider themselves as offenders but
  borrowers or electronic freedom fighters
• Want to punish administrators that are not
  security-conscious
• Creative in rationalising their own behaviour.
• Their guilt feelings are therefore rather easily
  neutralised

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT HARD CHARACTERISTICS

• Age 15 and 45 (peak 14 and 25)
• Sex mainly male although women are becoming
  increasingly involved
• Marital status Mostly young teenage boys
  obviously unmarried due to their age
• Education high school level degree level or
  self-educated to an equivalent level
• Employment School level, a variety of
  occupations
• Criminal record No previous criminal records

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INDIVIDUAL CONTEXT SOFT CHARACTERISTICS

• Problem solvers
• Creative
• Individualistic
• Arrogant
• Obsessed by and addicted to computers
• Passion for programming
• Sense of power or influence
• Control freaks in the sense that they love making
  complicated things such as computers do effective
  stuff for them

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SOCIAL CONTEXT

• Socioeconomic status
• Middle and upper class families
• Do have affordable or rather relatively
  inexpensive internet access
• Social problems
• Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs
  such as cannabis, LSD.
• Seems to be in general dislike of drugs that make
  them stupid

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SOCIAL CONTEXT

• Interpersonal relationships
• Loner except when communicating online
• Comes from troubled or dysfunctional homes
• Fears of being humiliated, unmasked or losing
  respect
• Generally works alone but does socialize normally
• Not socially integrated with age-peer group
• Tend not to engage in peer group behaviours such
  as dating school activities

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SOCIAL CONTEXT

• Dress and appearance
• Casual with the emphasis on comfortable,
  functional, and minimal maintenance.
• Very low tolerance of suits and other business
  attire
• Not uncommon for hackers to quit a job rather
  than conform to a dress code.
• When they are somehow backed into conforming to a
  dress code, they will find ways to subvert it,
  for example by wearing absurd novelty ties.
• Appearrance Long hair, beards, and moustaches
  are common.

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SOCIAL CONTEXT

• Communication style
• Poor person-to-person communication skills
• Sensitive to nuances of language and precise in
  their use of it (eg the distinction between
  hackers and crackers)
• Often better at writing than at speaking

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Precursors (motives)
• Motivated and prepared to accept challenges
• Excitement and intellectual satisfaction of
  hacking
• Have plenty of relatively inexpensive time to
  hone hacking skills
• Play on ones fears of the unknown
• Using their superior knowledge to infiltrate an
  individuals or a businesses personal security
• Financial distress as some does have a history of
  bad debt
• See it as an opportunity to increase self-esteem

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Predisposing factors
• A relationship between an e-criminal and
  victim/business is not required, so therefore the
  offender does not have to be an employee or ex
  employee of any business/bank
• Do not have any real understanding of the damage
  the activities might be causing
• Doing it in part to boost their own egos
• Views his/her criminal activities as a game

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Characteristics of organizations at risk
• Companies with administrators who are not
  security-conscious
• Companies with vulnerable servers
• Companies with sites housed in hosted
  environments in which a single break-in would
  make multiple Web sites vulnerable
• Not necessarily local Web sites but sites with
  vulnerabilities irrespective of where the site is
  located, it may range across a wide spectrum of
  countries
• Business systems and government agency systems
• Frequent users of Internet for electronic related
  commerce
• Universities as a computing environment

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Characteristics of individuals at risk
• Individuals using electronic banking privately on
  their personal computers
• Limited/not secured in accordance with the
  information security measures

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Precipitating factors
• Deficiencies of the administration of criminal
  justice
• Increasing sophistication and skills of offenders

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Triggering factors
• Rationalisation/ neutralisation
• Denial of responsibility
• Denial of injury
• Denial of victim
• Condemnation of the condemners
• Appeal to higher loyalties

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Opportunity for E-crime (Will be addressed in
  more detail) based on Routine activity theory
• The availability of suitable targets or
  opportunities Exploit common weaknesses in the
  security or target system Cheap internet access
  at homes Information technology offer incredible
  new opportunities for crime
• Absence of capable guardians
• The presence of motivated offenders

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• The Crime
• Context specific particulars of the individual
  criminal cases
• The criminals scan the information and delivery
  systems
• Identify vulnerabilities
• Find means to exploit them.

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THE CRIME

• Groups (r00t3rs)
• used automated searches to scan wide ranges of IP
  addresses
• searched for vulnerable servers
• used standard exploits and tools downloaded from
  the Internet
• hacked vulnerable servers
• Crime syndicates
• Hiring kids - to do hacking
• Why?
• Prosecution - Dolus capax (age) financial
  implications
• Individuals (aKt0r)
• Modus operandi individual victims
• Send programs to victims or users as e-mail
  messages
• Once those messages are opened,
• their identities are stolen (spy ware)

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CRIMINAL EVENT

• Aftermath
• The consequences and implications of the
  conviction of a E-crime offender
• Sentences Imprisonment 2 7 years
• Restitution 64 900 94 000 Probation (2
  years)
• Suspended sentence (4 years) Fine (100)
• Suffering of disgrace
• Humiliation
• The conviction is a personal calamity
• Prison sentencing is regarded as a sever
  punishment

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EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES IN E-CRIME

• Three kinds of crime-prone features of e-crime
  can be identified
• The Internet as wild frontier (lawlessness)
• Information systems provide opportunities for
  crime
• Information as crime target of e-crime

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The Internet as wild frontier (lawlessness)

• The popular view of the Internet as wild frontier
  where there is little order, no law, all are or
  ought to be free to do and say what they want
  promotes values that cherish an antagonism to any
  authority

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Information systems provide opportunities to

• Stealth
• Challenge
• Anonymity
• Reconnaissance
• Escape
• Multiplied
• (SCAREM Newman Clarke)

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• Stealth
• sneak completely invisible into the databases of
  a bank
• take what they want
• leave no or little trace of their entry
• Challenge
• motive to beat the system
• so much so for theft but being able to brag that
  they brought down or broke into the system

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• Anonymity
• Internet provides
• a degree of privacy in communications and
  purchases
• to criminals means of exploiting the system
• by enabling them to
• carry out crimes eg bank transfer fraud that
  require
• intrusions into a system over a long period of
  time

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• Reconnaissance
• to the offender to identify suitable targets
• availability of computer programmes
• on the web for download can be employed
• to scan the web for individual computers that are
  vulnerable to attack

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• Escape
• Kind of guaranteed
• Criminal exploits the characteristics of the
  Internet
• e.g. use others Internet address/computer/
  computer environment

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• Multiplied a single crime
• Additional crimes of more cash or other benefits
• e.g. cracking into corporate or government
  databases - possibility of crimes such as
  terrorism, blackmail, credit card fraud as a
  result of the value embedded in those databases

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Information as crime target of e-crime

• Kinds of information
• Intellectual property (books, CD, DVD software)
• Intelligence (database, credit information, id of
  clients
• Systems (information systems)
• Services (telephone,banking, medical advice)

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Kinds of targets

• Operational (provide object - money access
  -password ATM card)
• Transitional (Plan to steal money, target network
  to gain access to bank accounts)
• Proximate (Scan for vulnerable target)
• Convertible (steal cell phone to use phone
  services steal credit card to purchase goods)
• Attractive (High-profile business websites)
• Incidental (virus/worms, more websites, more
  users)
• Undifferentiated (disrupt network no specific
  object/person)

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Elements of consumer products that made them
vulnerable to theft

• concealable (move files and hide anywhere on the
  Internet),
• removable (copy files, leave original but
  similar),
• available (all info are available on the
  Internet),
• valuable (data bases of personal information of
  customers are valuable to merchants)
• enjoyable (music and videos)
• disposable (anything can be sold on the Internet)

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Hackers ethic

• Access to computers should be unlimited and total
• All information should be free
• Mistrust authority promote decentralization
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking not
  bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or
  position
• You create art and beauty on a computer
• Computers can change your life for the better
• Levy (Newman Clarke 200371