Internet scam artists are becoming more and more prevalent in the arena of Cyber Crime. Police use an example of a male named Perdeep Singh who advertised the rental of a 3 bedroom house and obtained $2,400 each from 33 different families and then fled the scene. In 1999 there were a couple hundred reports of identity theft, now it is not unusual to receive 6,000 reports of identity theft in a given year. The article mentions an ad for a $135 dollar Ipod in which paypal is used but the item never gets sent to the buyers.
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_9228705
Elements of Computer Forensics:
Computer identity theft threatens confidentiality. In the case of both the rental unit as well as the paypal account, the scam artists are obtaining information such as location, credit card numbers or bank account information, names, etc of the victims and using their access to that information to get money from then without producing a service.
In crimes such as the use of paypal to advertise the make-believe sale of the Ipod systems such a integrity and authentication are compromised. If the officers cannot locate the assailant that has advertised the selling of the Ipod, there is a change that the assailant hacked into the paypal website and gained the logo for his/her own purposes, compromising the integrity of the paypal system. He/she has also compromised the authentication of the system because there is a failure to verify that the item is really for sale and where the seller of the item is actually physically located. If the paypal system integrity has been compromised and the use of the logo is not valid, the non-repudiation theorem has also been compromised. Customers paying for the Ipod cannot legitimately prove that the Ipod has been purchased. In this case it appears that the customers are able to prove the purchase but they cannot verify the location of the seller nor are they able to guarantee that they will receive the item. Availability was compromised because customers never received the Ipod.
Availability and authentication were also compromised with the rental unit. Families paying to rent the unit were unable to access the rental service after the assailant received money for the service. In the same sense, authentication was compromised because once the assailant received the funs, he moved to another location, making it hard to verify his whereabouts.
I have had similar experience with Ebay, I tried to sell a computer, someone from Africa emailed me from paypal saying that I had a paypal account set up and then someone was buying the computer so that I need to place the funds in the account. I checked Ebay, and although the email had the paypal logo on it, there was no account in paypal set up for me at that time.
