Putrajaya, Wed.

The information super highway has been abused to such an extent that fraud, sabotage, espionage and even attempted murder are some of the crimes committed.

“Intelligent hydra viruses which replicate and steal sensitive information is ending e-mails using another’s identity and source code theft are just some of the challenges authorities have come up against,” said cyber crime specialist Rohas Nagpal.

Speaking to a group of 100 at a seminar on crimes over the Internet today, Nagpal, who is the president of India-based Asian School of Cyber Laws, painted a grim picture describing how information technology has been abused for criminal activity.

In the case of an attempted cyber-murder, an unidentified individual hacked into a hospital’s computer system and altered prescription for a patient – the intended victim – to include dangerous drugs last year.

Without disclosing identities, Nagpal said hospital authorities detected the alteration and prevented any untoward incident.

Countries like Malaysia, which were implementing e-government initiatives, need to be cautious about such matters as loopholes could be used by any person or organization for cyber crime or cyber terrorism.

Source codes for software – which tell how the software is constructed – could be sold for a high price or pose a security risk if it falls into the wrong hands.

“By knowing how the software was written, one could easily look for loopholes for viruses to attack or for hackers to enter into the network to, say, erase a prison record or create a false identity for a terrorist.”

Other possibilities include the sabotage of computerized industrial machinery, the use of another person’s e-mail identity and hijacking of servers or nodes belonging to banks to secure financial information or diverting funds to the saboteur’s account.