Introduction

What image comes to mind when one hears the term computer crime? What about the term cyber crime? One may think of pimply-faced teenage hackers locked up in a dark bedroom littered with diet soda cans, accessing top-secret files on super-secret government computers. Others may think of a creepy old man, hiding behind a keyboard in his attempts to lure children into an illicit rendezvous. Still others may see the Nigerian e-mail scammer, or the auction fraudster, or the identity thief. The important point here is that the term computer crime has different connotations depending on the situation, the person, and their individual frame of reference. If the investigation of computer crime didn t require the involvement of many different communities from law enforcement to private security, and from prosecutors to network administrators the definitional issue would not be a problem. However, computer crime is, by its very nature, not restricted by conventional or physical borders. Many different communities all have a part to play in the investigation of computer crime. Understanding the definitions, and more importantly the connotations, of the words we speak are critical in bridging the gaps between these disparate communities,

That is not to say the term computer crime is not without its definitions. Several authors have provided solid attempts to place delineating boxes around computer crime, cyber crime, Internet crime, and so on. In the pages that follow, we will take a closer look at the existing definitions first to educate the reader on the...