Tracking Digital Footprints of Scareware to Thwart Cyber Hypnotism Through Cyber Vigilantism in Cyberspace

The characteristics of the Internet, which include digitization,anonymity, connectivity, mobility, and transnational nature;blur the traditional model of crime investigation / lawenforcement and call for new strategies. Many simple yetpopular malicious activities over internet are carried out byscammers / con artists largely through electronic mails andwebsites using cyber hypnotism, often in combination withdistribution and propagation of malware. Such crimes ofpersuasion need to be managed through due diligence.Recently, an added web- based threat is recognized in theform of scareware which is making even the savviest ofcomputer users their victim, and therefore, there is a need tofocus on trying to detect such suspicious activity as quickly aspossible in order to shut it down. An in-depth analysis of fewscareware reveal that they have created many new and not sowidely recognized online threats with inside intelligence byproviding primary delivery mechanism for malware such asrogue anti-virus and anti-spyware, which are beyond thereach of many legitimate anti-virus programs currently in use.They may cause a Denial of Service (DoS) attack forcing thesystem to crash or even a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)attack. Looking at such unprecedented challenges incyberspace, a policy of cyber vigilantism adopting an activedefense rather than a reactive approach is contemplated. Itis felt that in this age of mobile workforce, many of suchpeople working as cyber analytics, or cyber-crime researchermay accomplish this work of community policing and play asproactive guardians of cyberspace.