An Introduction to Cybercrime
The internet is widely regarded as the epitome of never-ending innovation and creativity. It is considered the most fascinating, wild, and phenomenal creation in the history of humanity. According to a study, 95 percent of all the world’s information is digitized and accessible on the internet. If you even begin to think about how big the internet is, your brain might start to hurt. One way to answer this question is to consider the total amount of data held by the biggest online service providers (SPs)—that is, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. Science Focus estimates that these tech giants collectively store at least 1,200 petabytes of data. That is 1.2 million terabytes, which is equal to approximately 1,200,000,000,000,000,000 bytes (Mitchell, 2021).
If information is power in the digital/online age (and it is), then Google has the right to claim that it is the most influential company in the world. It dominates almost every sector it is getting into, as it has collected, digitized, arranged, and presented more information than any other company in the world’s history. According to reports, Google owns more than 90 percent of the worldwide search market. More than 2 trillion Google searches are made every year (BroadbandSearch, 2021). To put this in perspective, that works out to more than 5 billion searches every day, 228 million every hour, 3 million every minute, and 63,000 every second.
This chapter gives an overview of the broad research, with a particular focus on cybercrime and the Dark Web. Understanding what cybercrime is, the various types, and how to protect yourself from it will help to keep our society running and stay safe online. Subsequently, the chapter briefly discusses two popular Dark Web access tools (The Onion Router (TOR) browser and the Invisible Internet Project (I2P)). Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics:
- Classification of major cybercrimes
- Types of cyberattacks
- Evolution of cybercrime
- The internet’s three primary levels
- Dark Web access tools
