Status and Trends in the Development of Cybercrime in the Russian Federation

The purpose of this study was to study the emergence and development of cybercrime in the information space of the Russian Federation. It has been established that cybercrime is a modern type of crime known throughout the world. It is not limited by the territorial borders of countries, time, space, as it operates on the Internet. Any person or organization using computers, devices capable of accessing the Internet, smartphones can become vulnerable to a cybercriminal. The target can be both citizens and state bodies and organizations, private companies. The objectives of the study are to clarify the need to define the understanding of computer information at the legislative level. Due to the lack of a legalized definition, it is impossible to propose any methods for investigating cybercrimes that would be suitable. As a rule, they are not used in practice. Another problem is the human factor: Interior Ministry officials do not always correctly understand the essence of cybercrime. Because of this, they lose sight of the intent that guided the criminals. It is concluded that not only the author's definition of cybercrime, which is in this study, will be required, but also to take measures to effectively combat cybercrime. So, cybercrime is not only computer crimes in the narrow sense, but also attacks on other people's computers and computer systems, electronic databases and pages, accounts, other illegal actions, the commission of which becomes possible only when using a computer or other similar technology. Cybercriminals use cyberspace to achieve their goals. Their actions fall under the jurisdiction of not only national and international law. Cybercrime is a general concept that includes not only computer crimes, but also offenses in which computer technology is used as a weapon of crime.