Eugene Reznik's Assignment

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/business/media/washington-post-says-site-breached-by-syrian-group.html?_r=0 

Paragraph: The Syrian Electronic army hacked the washington post by hacking some of their articles. This group of people supports the regime of the Syrian leader Bahar Al Assad. The paper also reported that the Syrian group attacked others as well such as Time Magazine and CNN. The reason this attack was made had to with the recent civil war that Syria had used and its controversial use of chemical weapons. The attack was made against new reporters that were primarily against his regime and how he was handling the situation. The group stated in a tweet that it was able to accomplish the hack  by gaining access to one of its bussiness partners called Outbrain. Outbrain is A third-party content recommendation service and it works by embedding a widget on Web sites filled with sponsored links.

         The reason that these group of hackers showed disinhibition was that they simply took their anger out on new stations and websites that they thought negatively or maybe in their eyes, un-characistically portrayed the Syrian government. For days now stations like CNN and Fox News has portrayed Assad's regime as tyrannical and very unethical as the use of chemical weapons was is not allowed on a global scale. As a leading world country the United States had to take a stance and this involved condemning Assad and the Syrian government. The hackers wanted to send a message that didn't really have any major consequences but rather share that they disapprove of the stance America is taking and don't like the way they portray that position towards the American People in the media. Thereby this kind of disinhibition is invisibility as this group of people were not physically scene as their attack was solely a cyber consequence.

Elana Hanen's Assignment

Google users in Iran were hacked through “phishing emails” possibly coming from the Iranian government.  Phishing emails are like spam emails in which they appear to be legit, appearing identical to the website official homepage; however, once the victim logs into their account the hacker has complete access to the account as well.  Though this technique is usually used when criminals hack bank accounts, in this case the crime is politically motivated.  Thousands of these emails were sent to Google users in Iran, but once Google noticed what was going on they immediately notified the people who had been hacked and advised them to take extra measures of authenticating/protecting their accounts. Though the source of these phishing emails is technically unknown, the circumstances lead people to believe that it was tied to the Iranian presidential elections.  It seems as though the hackers thought illegally obtaining peoples information would offer insight regarding Iranian political activism. 

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-06/google-reveals-iranian-government-phishing-attempt

In this crime, I believe that the hackers’ disinhibition was caused by “minimization of status.” The inherent anonymity on the internet is liberating for people because they can do and/or say things online that they never would have the courage to do in person.  The hackers sending out the phish emails could easily access and use the very private information discovered because they had nothing holding them back.  It is much easier to disregard authority on the internet because there aren’t any intimidating social cues on cyber space to deter them.  The hackers may have believed they were doing something important by hacking information for the Iranian government, but in reality they are just criminals.  

Helen Insenselth's Assignment

Assignment: Cyber Crime

By: Helene Inselseth

In July 2013, five East-European men were charged in New Jersey for one of the largest hacking schemes in the history of the United States. The five men hacked into computers of big international retail chains and stole more than 160 million credit card numbers. Retail chains like 7-Eleven and Carrefour was touched by the criminal act and lost hundreds of millions of dollars. 
The East-European men operated in a hacking organization that penetrated the information system of many large companies. In the New Jersey case they used “sniffer” programs to steal usernames, passwords and personal identification information, and further got access to the card holders´ accounts. Some of the hackers have made several frauds, and the authorities have been pursuing them for years.

There can be several reasons for these hackers to commit their crime. I believe they were affected by the disinhibition effect known as “invisibility” or “you can´t see me”. In many online environments you can do whatever you like without people knowing, and the power of being hidden overlaps with concealing your identity and staying anonymous. When the five men stole the credit card information of millions of credit cards, they didn´t have to make eye contact with the targets, and they were not physically seen. The fact that there was no need for physical interaction might be the reason for them going through with these huge frauds that had such enormous consequences in the real world.




http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/5-hackers-charged-in-largest-data-breach-scheme-in-u-s-.html

Clémence Robineau's Assignment

Assignment: Cyber Crime

By: Clémence Robineau

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/02/us-crime-silkroad-raid-idUSBRE9910TR20131002

The FBI has shut down an alleged online drug marketplace, known as “Silk Road”.

This anonymous haven for illegal drugs like heroin, cocaine, and criminal activities such as murder for hire has seen its alleged owner, Ross William Ulbricht, get arrested and his bail hearing is set for this Friday, October 4^th  2013.

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint. This site has sold over hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs and also shared tutorials on hacking ATM machines and provided contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters. The website worked with the digital currency Bitcoin and the sales generated by Silk Road were worth more than 9.5 billion bitcoin, which is about $1.2 billion.

This online disinhibition effect that Ross William Ulbricht went through can be viewed as “dissociative anonymity”. According to his parents, Ross was a stellar student who graduated from UPenn with a master’s in material sciences, but according to his alias Dread Pirate Roberts, Ross was a worldwide drug dealer and computer hacker. His anonymity on the Internet led him to conduct this grand scheme that paralyzed the drug world into World Wide Web frenzy where anyone could illegally buy drugs from the comfort of their own home. Ross William Ulbricht even admitted to it himself when speaking with another user: “Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct."

Inga Drågum Hallingbye's Assignment#1

Assignment : Cybercrime

By: Inga Draagum

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/27/london_schoolboy_arrested_for_biggest_ddos_attack_in_history/

The London police arrested a schoolboy in April, when they discovered a large amount of money flowing threw his bank account. The boy was also caught while logged in to various virtual systems and forums. The boy was leading what the police say is one of the biggest “Distributed denial of service” attacks. Ddos attacks causes Internet servers to shutdown. The victim of this massive attack was ironically, the internet´s “watchdog” Spamhouse, which is a company that tracks Internet spam senders. The attack was claimed to disrupt the functionality of the interned worldwide, but the hacker only managed to shut down the Spamhouse´s Internet page and e-mail server. The 16-year-old schoolboy was claimed to be a part of an international gang of cyber-crooks, but the police have no idea of how this boy got implicated in this Internet crime activity. The schoolboy was released on bail but is facing a trail later this year.

There is no known reason for why this schoolboy was attending these Internet crime activities. One theory that I think might have caused this boy to implicate in such Internet activity, is the disinhibiting effect called “Minimization of status”. On the Internet you are anonymous, which causes people to do stuff they don’t normally would have done. Minimization of status is accorded to theory; when people participate in crimes do to the lack of boundaries and authorization online. At the Internet you are equalized due to anonymity, and your status in the community have no meaning here. You can therefore participate in crimes online that you could not have been participated in, in real life. This boy might have felt that he was doing something great, in terms of messing around whit people of higher “status” within the community. I think that he did this because he liked the though of being in control over something of high significance in the real world.

Cecilie Jenssen's Assignment #1

Assignment 2 - Analysis of an online crime

By: Cecilie G. Jenssen

According to hackernews.com, FBI recently arrested a 19 – year – old college student from Temecula, California called Jared James Abrahams for sextortion. Abrahams had been hacking the webcams of young women, among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf. He had been hacking the webcams to extort nude photos and videos of the girls, and had in some cases even forced the young women to strip. He is now being accused of hacking and charged with extortion, which could send him to federal prison for up to two years. This year in June, Abrahams admitted the things he had done, and said that he had 30 to 40 “slave computers”, or other people’s electronic devices he controlled. 

http://thehackernews.com/2013/09/fbi-arrested-19-year-old-hacker-for.html

I think that the reason for this cybercrime can be explained by addressing it to the disinhibiton of dissociative imagination. Consciously or unconsciously, people may feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in a different space, that one’s online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world.

I think that Abraham hacked the webcams of the young women to act out one of his fantasies. He might have thought that his fantasies couldn’t come true in real life, and therefore decided to create a fantasy world where he could control the lives of several young women at the same time. He may also have thought that by blackmailing the young women, he could force them to become his girlfriends, which might have been his dream from the beginning.