Cybercrime and Online Safety in Cyberspace
Cybercrime is essentially a transnational crime with a ‘modus operandi’ that exploits inter-state differences in the capacity to respond to such crime, and appears in the same company as such powerful global concerns as civil war, genocide and poverty (United Nations 2004). This transnational character provides cybercriminals, especially organized crime (OC), with the agility to avoid counter-measures even when implemented by capable actors (Brenner 2002, 2006; Council of Europe 2004). Although some have questioned the existence of organized criminal activities in cyberspace, several studies have noted the potential and actual synergy between organized crime and cyberspace in recent years. This paper outlines some of the issues and problems in respect to the role of OC in cybercrime.
Cybercrime Update: Trends and Developments
In this paper we aim to briefly overview recent developments and trends in 'cybercrime'. A number of criterion may be applied to gauge prominence or salience of the particular forms of cybercrime now manifest. These include the prevalence (including frequency of specific forms) of the crime among the population or a particular sub-population (including a geographical area or commercial arena), duration (the intensity or persistence of the problem) and finally the severity (harm or gravity of the offence) of the cybercrime. In order to prioritize the most prominent forms of cybercrime these basic measurements are required – for the most part cybercrime eludes the kinds of measurement we may need in order to perceive either trends in certain forms or assess the seriousness of the different types of cybercrime. For example, what is the relevant importance of persistent spamming in comparison to the occasional virus? Or occasional theft like intrusion offences versus a complex payment card duplication activity (carding)? Of course the priorities will to some extent depend on the circumstances and on what standpoint is taken – the victim, public police, and the information communication technology (ICT) industry. At present law enforcement agencies around the world struggle to assess the relative risks of the various forms of cyber crime now encountered. One hurdle to this necessary assessment is the problem of the classification of the different forms of cybercrime. Such a formal or even a provisional classification of cybercrime has proven elusive despite the benefits this would yield in assessing the relative risks of the different forms of cybercrime. The lack of a classification system is a significant handicap and may be due to the considerable confusion that occurs around the very notion of what constitutes 'cybercrime' or computer-related crime and indeed whether it is new or old crime in new bottles.
A traffic scheduling framework in broadband wireless access systems
In this paper, we present a traffic scheduling framework for allocating the upstream channel bandwidth in broadband wireless access systems, where both voice and data applications are supported. Our traffic scheduling framework is aimed at supporting diverse QoS requirements and obtaining high utilization of the upstream bandwidth. It prioritizes traffic streams according to different classes of service, and provides fair access of bandwidth to the users. The presented framework consists of three algorithms: a calibration algorithm for the jittered constant bit rate (CBR) traffic, a scheduling algorithm for the jittered CBR traffic, and a scheduling algorithm for the unspecified bit rate traffic. The proposed algorithms are feasible when either the asynchronous transfer mode or multi-protocol label switching protocol is deployed at the network edge. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms in achieving high bandwidth utilization and the good traffic performance in terms of both cell loss ratio and mean queuing delay.