An underworld don is hospitalized for a minor surgery. His rival goons hire a computer expert to hack into the hospital's computer systems and alter the medicines prescribed for the don. The nurse innocently gives the don a high dose of the medicine, to which the patient is severely allergic, resulting in his death. Sounds unbelievable? Well, its true. This was the first ever cyber murder reported in the US five years ago!

A cyber crime is a crime wherein the computer is either the tool of the target or both. In India, the Information Technology Act 2000, which came into effect in October 2000, provides stringent penalties for cyber criminals, from fines of Rs 1 crore to imprisonment upto 10 years. Contrary to common belief, cyber crimes are very common in India, the most common complaints relating to emails containing threatening or defamatory messages.

In a recent case, a groom's family received numerous emails containing defamatory information about the prospective bride. Fortunately, they did not believe the emails and chose to take the matter to the police. The sender of the emails turned out to be the girl's step-father, who did not want the girl to get married, as he would have lost control over her property, of which he was the legal guardian.

Tracing emails is not very difficult. Every email leaves behind a trace leading back to its point of origin in the form of an email header. The detailed email headers show the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer of the originator of the email. An IP address is a number (e.g. 120.112.111.23) that can enable the police, with the help of the relevant Internet Service Provider, to reach the originator's (the person who sent the email) doorstep.

The other cyber crimes common in India include web-defacement, virus attacks, denial of service attacks, forgery of university and college mark sheets using computers and cyber pornography. In an American case, the police had closed in on a cyber criminal. They arrested him and confiscated his computer system. When they set up the computer system in the police station to recover evidence, to their shock they found the data completely missing. What they did not realize was that the criminal had set up extremely powerful magnetic coils in his doorway and once the computer was taken through this strong magnetic field, all the information stored in it was irretrievably lost! There was no proof of what crime the suspected criminal had committed and he went scot-free.

Interestingly, if you want to wipe an incriminating floppy clean, all you need do is place it close to a cellular phone or even a hot cup of coffee. Chances are that the strong magnetic fields they create will interfere with the floppy and corrupt it. A CD of course is a more robust customer.

A disturbing trend that is emerging nowadays is the use of technology by terrorists to encrypt their communications. Osama Bin Laden is believed to use Steganography to hide secret messages within pictures. E.g. a picture of Aishwarya Rai hosted on a website could contain a hidden message to blow up a building! Surprisingly this hidden message does not alter the look or size of the original picture in any manner.

The best way to prevent your becoming the victims of such crimes is to keep a VIGIL on your computer or network. This can be achieved by the combination of electronic security measures (like firewalls, proxies, anti-virus solutions) and information security measures (like cryptography and digital signatures).