Crime and Policing in Virtual Worlds

The rapidly changing nature of information and communications technologies suggests that as soon as new hardware, software or other applications are introduced, they will be exploited in some form or fashion by international criminal organisations. The speed at which criminals can exploit these technologies is truly remarkable. Unfortunately, law enforcement and the criminal justice system, bound by limited budgets, finite training, and traditional legal regimes are much slower in their abilities to respond.Cybercrime has, and will continue, to evolve overtime. From the early days of phone phreaking and the hacking of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS’s), information technology crime has transformed itself to include a much broader spectrum of criminal activities comprising previously unimagined technical forms of malfeasance, such as computer viruses, worms and Trojans; hacktivism, phishing, botnets, critical information infrastructure attacks and even cyber-terrorism.Given the significant advances in computer processing power and the growing number of Internet users around the world, it should come as no surprise that newer forms of criminal conduct in cyberspace are surfacing, to include crime and disorder in “virtual worlds”(1) as well.