Extract from Home Office Cybercrime Report

The top three concerns were online paedophile activity (e.g. online grooming, pay-per-view websites of illegal images, sharing of images by offenders using peer-to-peer applications), fraud (e.g. theft of personal organisers containing sensitive personal information to execute fraudulent online transactions, identity theft against egovernment services) and espionage (corporate, criminal and political spies, using techniques as diverse as social engineering and complex software).
This paper has adopted the term netcrime (Mann and Sutton, 1998), defined here as ‘criminal or otherwise malicious activity utilising or directed towards the Internet and/or information technology applications’. This definition extends beyond desktop or laptop computers, embracing all forms of networked device (e.g. hand-held computers of various forms and networked domestic appliances). It is also assumed that most criminal activity will involve such devices being connected to a Local or Wide Area Network, the Internet or a public telecommunications network.
The highest rated single item related to the perceived ability of offenders to undertake secure (from law enforcement) communications via the use of email and associated technologies such as cryptography, steganography and anonymous remailers. The highest rated category of technology was the use of peer-to-peer or file sharing applications. Such applications vary from those commonly used for the illegal downloading of music and video (e.g. KaZaA), to more specialised applications built for security and anonymity, which can facilitate secure criminal communications. As well as facilitating criminal or malicious activity, some technologies were also a source of concern as they represented a security threat to legitimate users. Peer-to-peer applications were considered to represent a potential security breach to legitimate users, as were wireless networks, currently being deployed in both public and private environments. One of the broadest concerns reflected the use, or abuse, of the World Wide Web via individual websites. Websites themselves can represent a direct threat to users if they are designed to falsely capture sensitive personal information for fraudulent purposes. Indirectly, websites represent a threat as a number are a source of offending information, providing resources to offenders for a variety of offences, most cited being the provision of hacking tools and know-how. Finally, websites can be the targets of offending, falling victim to denial-of-service attacks or web defacements for example.