Ethical Hacking
CYBER CRIME AND INFORMATION WARFARE
Dr Peter Grabosky
Australian Institute of Criminology, ACT
Paper presented at the Transnational Crime Conference
convened by the Australian Institute of Criminology
in association with the Australian Federal Police and
Australian Customs Service
and held in Canberra, 9-10 March 2000
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Introduction
Willie Sutton, a notorious American bank robber of a half century ago, was once asked why he
persisted in robbing banks. “Because that’s where the money is,” he is said to have replied.1 The
theory that crime follows opportunity has become established wisdom in criminology;
opportunity reduction has become one of the fundamental principles of crime prevention.
But there is more to crime than opportunity. Crime requires a pool of motivated offenders,
and a lack of what criminologists would refer to as “capable guardianship”; someone to mind
the store, so to speak.
These basic principles of criminology apply to computer related crime no less than they do to
bank robbery or to shop lifting. They will appear from time to time throughout the following
discussion. Not all of these factors are amenable to control by governments alone. It follows,
therefore, that a variety of institutions will be required to control computer related crime.
This paper discusses current and emerging forms of computer-related illegality. It reviews nine
generic forms of illegality involving information systems as instruments or as targets of crime.
It will also discuss issues arising from the global reach of information systems. It is trite to
describe the ways in which computers have, figuratively speaking, made the world a smaller
place. The corresponding potential for trans-jurisdictional offending will pose formidable
challenges to law enforcement. For some crimes, this will necessitate a search for alternative
solutions.
The following pages will suggest that much computer-related illegality lies beyond the
capacity of contemporary...
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