Cyber Crime Offenders of Younger Age Group Rising: National Crime Records Bureau

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Data between 2008 and 2011 depicted that around 60 percent of the people arrested for cyber crimes belonged to the age group of 18 to 30 years. The cyber crimes include activities such as forgery, obscene publications as well as hacking.

The NCRB data revealed that from 2008 to 2011, 1184 people were arrested in context with the cyber crimes and that this number was on the rise. Additional Deputy Commissioner (Economic Offences Wing) SD Mishra explained that most of the offenders came from the younger generation age group and that these people were aware of various means and methods which can be used for exploiting the cyber space.

Hacking

The records, in the meanwhile, also revealed that the cases of hacking increased considerably from 2008 to 2011. There is an increase from 56 cases of hacking to 826 cases. Almost half of the people arrested in hacking cases belonged to the age group of 18 to 30 years.
It is important to note that there is no special mention of hacking in the IT Act, 2000. But it is derived under the Section 66 of Computer Related offences, where there is a mention of maximum sentence of 3 years.

Obscene Publications

The cases under the obscene publications reached to 496 in the year 2011 and 63.6 percent offenders came from 18-30 years of age group. The offence under obscene publication also has the sentence of three years imprisonment. It is important to mention here that the cases of obscene publications have increased tremendously, but still there hasn’t been any case of child pornography.

Forgery

The cases of forgery increased by more than 400 percent between 2008 and 2011. There was an increase in number of such reported cases over the time because of rising awareness. The number of reported cases in forgery increased, especially in case of financial losses. Most of such cases dealt with credit card frauds as well as Internet banking.

Cyber Security Arms

In those cases, where the involvement of unique data storage system as well as certain encryption code is required, the law enforcement agencies often make use of private security firms like Pyramid Cyber Security & Forensics.

The Managing Director of Pyramid Cyber Security & Forensics Alok Gupta explained that in such cases there is a need of cooperation between the countries. He also referred to a cyber security agency known as IMPACT (International Multilateral Partnership against Cyber Crime). IMPACT is the Non-Profit organisation which has 195 countries as its members. IMPACT acts like the cyber security arm of UN and also helps in dealing with the cyber threats.

Cyber Security can be under threat because of mobile devices, cloud adoption as well as malware without the signatures.