Cyberterrorism
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation.
Experienced cyberterrorists, who are very skilled in terms of hacking can cause massive damage to government systems and might leave a country in fear of further attacks.
[11][12] If cyberterrorism is treated similarly to traditional terrorism, then it only includes attacks that threaten property or lives, and can be defined as the leveraging of a target's computers and information, particularly via the Internet, to cause physical, real-world harm or severe disruption of infrastructure.
[13] They disagree with labeling it as terrorism because of the unlikelihood of the creation of fear, significant physical harm, or death in a population using electronic means, considering current attack and protective technologies.
[15] As with cybercrime in general, the threshold of required knowledge and skills to perpetrate acts of cyberterrorism has been steadily diminishing thanks to freely available hacking suites and online courses.
[16] Additionally, the physical and virtual worlds are merging at an accelerated rate, making for many more targets of opportunity which is evidenced by such notable cyber attacks as Stuxnet, the Saudi petrochemical sabotage attempt in 2018 and others.
[18] One way of understanding cyberterrorism involves the idea that terrorists could cause massive loss of life, worldwide economic chaos and environmental damage by hacking into critical infrastructure systems.
The Technolytics Institute defines cyberterrorism as [t]he premeditated use of disruptive activities, or the threat thereof, against computers and/or networks, with the intention to cause harm or further social, ideological, religious, political or similar objectives.
Examples are hacking into computer systems, introducing viruses to vulnerable networks, web site defacing, Denial-of-service attacks, or terroristic threats made via electronic communication.
[23] The American Federal Emergency Management agency defines cyberterrorism as: [T]he illegal threat and the attack against computers, networks, and information stored, where it is carried out to frighten and force the government or its people ti achieve political or social objectives.
[24] NATO defines cyberterrorism as "[a] cyberattack using or exploiting computer or communication networks to cause sufficient destruction or disruption to generate fear or to intimidate a society into an ideological goal".
[33] Dependence on the Internet is rapidly increasing on a worldwide scale, creating a platform for international cyber-terror plots to be formulated and executed as a direct threat to national security.
In an article about cyber attacks by Iran and North Korea, The New York Times observes: The appeal of digital weapons is similar to that of nuclear capability: it is a way for an outgunned, outfinanced nation to even the playing field.
Although the millennium bug was by no means a terrorist attack or plot against the world or the United States, it did act as a catalyst in sparking the fears of a possibly large-scale devastating cyber-attack.
The high-profile terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, and the ensuing War on Terror by the US led to further media coverage of the potential threats of cyberterrorism in the years following.
[40] Authors such as Winn Schwartau and John Arquilla are reported to have had considerable financial success selling books which described what were purported to be plausible scenarios of mayhem caused by cyberterrorism.
[42] For instance, in the case of a cyberterrorist attack on a public infrastructure such as a power plant or air traffic control through hacking, there is uncertainty as to its success because data concerning such phenomena are limited.
Due to the pervasiveness of the internet and the amount of responsibility assigned to this technology, digital weapons pose a threat to entire economic or social systems.
[47] The Baltic state of Estonia was the target of a massive denial-of-service attack that ultimately rendered the country offline and shut out from services dependent on Internet connectivity in April 2007.
The infrastructure of Estonia including everything from online banking and mobile phone networks to government services and access to health care information was disabled for a time.
The cyber attack was a result of an Estonian-Russian dispute over the removal of a bronze statue depicting a World War II-era Soviet soldier from the center of the capital, Tallinn.
In August 2021, police arrested five suspected white-collar jihadis who were preparing a hit list of officers, journalists, social activists, lawyers and political functionaries to create fear among people.
The white-collar jihadis are considered "worst kind of terrorists" as they remain anonymous and safe in other nations, but inflict "immeasurable" amount of damage and brainwashing.
National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) is working on joint programs with different NGOs and other cyber security organizations in Pakistan to combat this problem.
A series of powerful cyber attacks began 27 June 2017, that swamped websites of Ukrainian organizations, including banks, ministries, newspapers and electricity firms.
[66] On 22 December 2009, the White House named its head of computer security as Howard Schmidt to coordinate U.S Government, military and intelligence efforts to repel hackers.
The attack was a distributed denial-of-service attack in which selected sites were bombarded with traffic to force them offline; nearly all Estonian government ministry networks as well as two major Estonian bank networks were knocked offline; in addition, the political party website of Estonia's Prime Minister Andrus Ansip featured a counterfeit letter of apology from Ansip for removing the memorial statue.
[107][108] During the Russo-Georgian War, on 5 August 2008, three days before Georgia launched its invasion of South Ossetia, the websites for OSInform News Agency and OSRadio were hacked.
Dmitry Medoyev, at the time the South Ossetian envoy to Moscow, claimed that Georgia was attempting to cover up information on events which occurred in the lead-up to the war.
[113] The New York Times reported that American hackers from the United States Cyber Command planted malware potentially capable of disrupting the Russian electrical grid.
