Cyberterrorism

Threats to information security are everywhere. There are viruses, spyware, bots, malware, worms, and trojans to name a few. The one commonality among these are agents, those who write, distribute, or otherwise infect systems. Several examples of these are script kiddies, cybercriminals, spies, and disgruntled or compromised employees. One of the more insidious threats, because of their relative novelty are cyberterrorists. Cyberterrorists are, by definition, “[attackers] motivated by ideology to attack computers or infrastructure networks” (Ciampa 26). Because they are so new, many questions have arisen about cyberterrorism and cyberterrorists. Some of these include subjects such as methods of attack, prevalence, and motivation.        

To know cyberterrorism, one must first know terrorism. According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, terrorism is defined as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Terrorists use the fear generated by suicide bombings, hijackings, and shootings to influence popular opinion, in the hopes that their goals will be met. For some this is a political goal, such as Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing of the Federal Office Building on April 19, 1995. (Infoplease.com, “Terrorist Attacks in the U.S. or Against Americans”). For others, such as Islamic Jihaad, it is a religious or ideological goal. Cyberterrorists are the same in their motivations, but their methods are another matter entirely.

As stated before, cyberterrorists share the political and ideological motivations of their more mundane predecessors, but the forms of attack they use are, while in some ways similar, in others they are very different. Where a garden variety terrorist might take the staff of an embassy hostage, or ride a car bomb into a barracks, cyberterrorists might conceivably hold hostage an entire region, or simply cripple them with attacks on infrastructure and other systems. As our level of technology has grown, more and more of our day to day lives is run, or at least monitored by a computer. Interstate highways have traffic cameras spaced at regular intervals to monitor traffic flow. Power plants use computers to supervise their equipment and make sure that it is running properly. Air traffic controllers use computers and networks to help them communicate with and manage the thousands of daily flights that occur in the United States alone. Some of these systems include proximity warnings, to notify an  aircraft when it is approaching another aircraft, or to help pilots navigate in bad weather conditions, communications with other controllers to facilitate the hand off of flights leaving one’s sphere of responsibility, and more (New World Encyclopedia Online, “Air Traffic Control”). If these systems were compromised, power could be denied to several areas, pilots could be left flying blind, emergency vehicles may not know to take an alternate route to their destinations, and these are but a few problems that could occur.