For the purpose of putting Indian satellites in space, the Government established a Space Science & Technology Centre (SSTC) in 1965 in Thumba, followed by the erection of a Satellite Telecommunication Earth Station in 1967 at Ahmedabad. Since the creation of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on August 15, 1969, in the Department of Atomic Energy, ISRO has managed India’s space research and the uses of space for peaceful purposes.

In 1972, the Government established the Space Commission and the Department of Space (DOS) to conduct the nation’s space activities for ISRO at four space centers across the country. DOS reports directly to the Prime Minister and ISRO was placed under DOS on June 1, 1972, and made a Government organisation on April 1, 1975 virus/worm attack, trojan attack, denial of service attack, distributed denial of service attack, e-mail spoofing, intellectual property crime, or cyber stalking.

Unauthorized access, also known as cracking as opposed to hacking, means gaining access to a system without permission of the users or without proper authority, generally done either by faking identity, or by cracking access codes. E-mail is bombing means sending a large number of mails to the victim resulting in the victims mail account (in case of individual) or server (in case of corporations) crashing.

While data diddling is a kind of attack which involves altering the raw data before it is processed by a system and re-altering it after processing, Salami attack is generally used to commit financial crimes. In salami attack the alteration so small that in a single case it would go unnoticed. For example, if a bank employee deducts five rupees from every customer’s account, while the individual customers are unlikely to notice this small change but the employee will make a significant earning.

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Internet time theft connotes the usage by an unauthorized person of Internet time paid for by someone else. Logic bomb is an event dependent program that is created to do something only when a certain event occurs (e.g. the Chernobyl virus). Virus/Worm attack is a program which attaches itself to another file or a system and then circulates to other files and to other computers via a network. This attack usually affects computers by either altering or deleting data from it and differs from worms, which do not interfere with data; they simply multiply until they fill all available space on the computer.

While a Trojan is a program which causes some damage under the disguise of a useful program, denial of service attack involves flooding the computer resource with more requests than it can handle. This causes the resource to crash, thereby denying the authorized users the service. In the distributed denial of service attack, the perpetrators are more than one in number and geographically displaced. Hence, it becomes very difficult to control such attacks.

In e-mail spoofing, an e-mail appears to originate from one source but actually originates from another. Intellectual property crime involves the unauthorized copying and distributing of copyrighted software. Cyber stalking involves following a person on the Internet and causing harassment.

Cyber crime can be prevented to a certain extent by using firewalls, frequently changing passwords, safe surfing, frequent virus checks, and of criminal organizations. In a manner similar to legitimate organizations that use the information networks for record keeping and communication, there is evidence of information systems being used in drug trafficking, gambling, money laundering and weapons trade just to name a few.

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Another method of crime is related to telecommunications piracy. The fact that digital technology permits perfect reproduction and easy dissemination of print, graphics, sound, and multimedia combinations, has produced the temptation to reproduce copyrighted material either for personal use or for sale at a lower price.

A crime with major implications to common people is electronic money laundering. Electronic funds transfers have assisted in concealing and moving the proceeds of crime. Since emerging technologies make it easier to hide the origin and destination of funds transfer, money laundering has come to the living room. Another method of perpetration of the crime is through electronic vandalism and terrorism.

All societies in which computers play a major role in everyday life are vulnerable to attack from people motivated by either curiosity or vindictiveness. These people can not only cause inconvenience but also have the potential to inflict massive harm.

Another variety of cyber crime relates to sales and investment fraud. As electronic commerce or e-commerce becomes more and more popular, the application of digital technology to fraudulent crime also increases. The use of telephones for fraudulent sales pitches or bogus investment overtures is increasingly common. Cyberspace now abounds with a wide variety of investment opportunities, from traditional securities such as stocks and bonds to more exotic opportunities like coconut farming. This has led to a situation where fraudsters enjoy access to millions of people around the world, instantaneously and at minimal cost.

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Illegal interception of information is another variety of fraud. Developments in telecommunications as well as data transfer over the net have resulted in greater speed and capacity but also greater vulnerability. It is now easier than ever before for unauthorized people to gain access to sensitive information to the extent that electromagnetic signals emitted by a computer themselves can now be intercepted and cables may act as broadcast antennas.

Added to this is the absence of law to prevent the monitoring of remote signals from a computer. All this makes information more and more vulnerable to unauthorized users.

Cyber crime may be perpetrated through unauthorized access, e-mail bombing, data diddling, salami attack, internet time theft, logic bomb, major problems to cloud computing companies. One of those is called key logging. A key logging program records keystrokes. If a hacker manages successfully to load a key logging program on a victim’s computer, he or she can sturdy the keystrokes to discover user names and passwords. Of course, if time user’s computer is just a streamlined terminal, it might be impossible to install the program in the first place.

There is a growing concern in the IT industry about how cloud computing could impact the business of computer maintenance and repair. If companies switch to using streamlined computer systems, they will have fewer IT needs. Some industry experts believe that the need for IT jobs will migrate to the back end of the cloud computing system.