Definitions and types of cybercrime

Cybercrimes can mainly be separated into 2 different types of offence:

1. More traditional crimes that have now can occur online because of the use of technology, such as fraud, bullying, or radicalisation. These are known as cyber-enabled offences.
2. Crimes where computer systems are the focus of the attack, usually for the unauthorised access of data or to deliberately impair a website, programme or system. These are known as cyber-dependent offences.

Examples of these 2 types of cybercrime could include the following.

Cyber-enabled offences

• spam and scam emails
• phishing emails
• identity theft
• online fraud and scams, for example travel frauds and pension frauds
• copycat websites
• cyberbullying
• cyberstalking
• safe social networking
• online radicalisation
• child sexual exploitation
• sexting

Cyber-dependent offences

• malware
• viruses and spyware
• ransomware
• distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks
• hacking

National Cyber Security Centre glossary.