TODAY’S CYBERCRIMINAL TRENDS. 5
Literature review
The 21
st
century has reported most cases of cybersecurity threats than all the other
computing years combined. The latter is a shocking revelation than any technological device user
must worry about. Cybercriminals have become “smarter, faster and hardly traceable” in crime
execution, (Mateen, A., & Abbas, Q, 2016). Since the 1980’s hacking was not as commercialized
as it is currently with individuals and grouped cybercriminals targeting institutions, banks,
governments and even key personalities” to tap their data” (Broadhurst, R., Grabosky, P.,
Alazab, M., Bouhours, B., & Chon, S, 2014). Hackers have managed to steal personal data
belonging to organizations and “sell it to competitor institutions” (Yar, 2013). The latter defines
the fact that cybercrime is on the increase with an analytical curve showing that “cybercrime will
be overwhelming by 2050” (Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., & Liederbach, J, 2014). Breaches have
increased in the recent past and are more complex, “almost insolvable cases” (Hassan, A. B.,
Lass, F. D., & Makinde, J., 2012). Detectives in developed countries have come across many
cases of cybercrime happenings since 2000 than before. Organized internet crime has paralyzed
service delivery in some countries as the number of computer guru’s increase exponentially
globally. Computer crimes nowadays are committed to service to some interested parties as they
negatively impact others computer users. The latter is a trending offense whereby companies hire
hackers to break into the information database of other companies and get away with classified
information about the company.
Banking Trojans have been used to paralyze the operations of financial institutions hence
increasing the operational costs of the banks tremendously. Trojans steal confidential and
personal information of the” customers and the managerial staff of banks” (Hassan, A. B., Lass,
F. D., & Makinde, J., 2012). The latter has led to the endless loss of money and never-ending