CYBER TERRORISM

Cyber Terrorism

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

What is Cyber Terrorism?

How genuine is the Threat?

What is being done?

How can we defend ourselves?

Ethical issues

Conclusion

Introduction

With the recent terrorist attacks, many security experts are concerned about the threat to information assets in the United States (Verton2003). While data security has been a key anxiety since the proliferation of computer systems, the bigger levels of concern has provoked me to dedicate more assets to help battle this risk.

What is Cyber Terrorism?

According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of enquiry, cyber terrorism is any premeditated, politically motivated strike against data, computer schemes, computer programs, and data which outcomes in violence against non-combatant goals by sub-national groups or clandestine agents. Unlike a nuisance virus or computer attack that results in denial of service, a cyber terrorist attack would lead to physical violence or extreme financial harm (Warren Furnell2005). According to the U.S. Commission of Critical Infrastructure Protection, possible cyber terrorism targets include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers, and water systems.

Cyber terrorism is occasionally mentioned to as electronic terrorism or data war. Organized misdeed assemblies normally have a home groundwork in weak states that supply protected havens from which they conduct their transnational operations. In effect, this provides an added degree of protection against law enforcement and allows them to operate with minimal risk (Flemming Stohl 2000). The inherently transnational nature of the Internet aligns perfectly into this form of activity and the effort to maximize profits inside an agreeable degree of risk. In the virtual world, there are no boundaries, a characteristic that makes it very appealing for lawless person activity. When administration try to policemanmanman this virtual world, although, borders and national jurisdictions loom large -- making comprehensive investigation slow and tedious, at best, and unrealistic, at worst.

How real is the Threat?

This risk is certainly a clear and present danger. Consider the following:

•This year, the cipher Red virus infected over 760,000 computers worldwide and was the fastest spreading virus glimpsed to date over the Internet.

•Symantec's CTO Rob Clyde remarks that there are now so numerous free devices on the Internet that hackers needn't be experts to origin problems; all they have to do is run gladly available scripts. And with 97% of the world's cash provide in digital pattern, hacking as an intellectual exercise will rapidly give way to cybercrime for earnings, he predicts.

•Following the United States first strikes against sites in Afghanistan, Attorney General John Ashcroft said last week that the FBI and other government law-enforcement agents had advised thousands of CIOs, chief expertise agents, and IT managers that their IT systems may be aimed at in retaliatory terrorist attacks-or utilised to launch them. As companies heed Ashcroft's recommendations to sustain the largest state of alert, the way they do enterprise may change.

•In the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, hacking groups have formed and participated in pro-U.S. and anti-U.S. cyber activities, battled mainly through world wide web defacements. There has been negligible undertaking in the form of DDoS attacks, mostly ...