Cyberterrorism

The internet has grow in both its size and functionality. All people around the world are using the internet to convert, store, protect, process, transmit and retrieve information. In fact, most of people use it as a reliable place where they can trust putting and sending important data. Moreover, The internet was developed primarily as an unregulated, open architecture. This vulnerability has affected the use of the internet by leading to the increasing number of threats. It could be notable that there have been a massive change in both the nature of threats and the level of malicious attack in the internet now than it was in the past.

Nowadays, The internet is recognized as an influential tool of political economical , and social life. Attackers can threat anyone of those through many ways. So, people should be aware of all those threats. An example of such a dangerous threat is Cyber-terrorism.

“The threat posed by cyber-terrorism has grabbed the attention of the mass media, the security community, and the information technology industry. Journalists, politicians, and experts in a variety of fields have popularized a scenario in which sophisticated cyber-terrorists electronically break into computers that control dams or air traffic control systems, wreaking havoc and endangering not only millions of lives but national security itself”( Gabriel Weimann,2003). Computers can play an important role in terrorism at the same time they can provide a biggest defense.

This research paper will illustrate the meaning of cyber-terrorism, cyber-terrorists targets, its effects and the ways that have been taken to stop this threat and how can you protect your computer from such a threat like that. Finally we will discuss two cases about cyber-terrorism.

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What is Cyber-terrorism?

There are many different definitions of the phrase cyber terrorism but firstly let us know the word “cyber-terrorism” refers to what. It refers to two elements, cyberspace and terrorism. So any terrorist’s-acts on the cyberspace “the internet” can be under the name of “cyber-terrorism” like hacking; but there are some different characteristics of regular hackers than terrorist’s hackers. According to Dennies “Cyber-terrorism is an extension of terrorism and it takes advantage of the fact that our society is increasingly becoming dependent on computer networks and, particularly, dependent on the Internet. It is generally understood to mean unlawful attacks and threats of attack against computers, networks, and the information stored there. Its threaten the government or its people in furtherance of political or social objectives. Further, to qualify as cyber-terrorism, an attack should result in violence against persons or property, or at least cause enough harm to generate fear” (Dennies, 2002).

“Serious attacks against critical infrastructures of the economic, politic, social could be acts

of cyber-terrorism, depending on their impact. Attacks that disrupt nonessential services or that

are mainly a costly nuisance would not”.(Dennies,2002)

What are the cyber-terrorists targets?

The primary target for cyber-terrorism is the Internet. They consider it as a basic infrastructure where they can collect all the information they need and interconnect with their cooperators on other places to use it badly. An example could be when they use it for building a network between them so they can get their aims of disturbing a structure of by attacking a particular . Some of them use it in collecting the government’s data and try to change it and this can drop attractive way to bring the Internet down, since increasingly, all commerce depends on Internet-based transactions. The cyber-terrorism threat is real because it have already experienced experimental acts of cyber-terrorism when a large number of Internet-connected computers have stopped to function. They can get many things from attacking any website where they can benefit. ex, e commerce websites, steal personal information and sell it.(searchsecurity.techtarget.com)

What are the Effects of cyber-terrorism?

Cyber-terrorism has been a real threat for both society and computing. And this threat has influenced the computing and society by many ways.

Cyber-terrorism has seriously a large influence on significant numbers of people. Specially those who depends on e-commerce. Many terrorists aims to attack e-commerce websites to drop their server down and get benefit from this attack by many ways. Cyber-terrorism can weaken countries economy greatly, by doing this it can strip the country of its resources and make it more vulnerable to military attack.( www.auscert.org.au)

the loss of revenue for Internet based sites such as Yahoo! and eBay. Both these sites work on a �time is money’ concept whereby each second these sites are shut down they lose more and more potential customers.

It has affected many websites from being trusted. People’s demands denied because of those attacks and this could led to dangerous

What Should or have been done to stop this threat?

In order to prevent such terrorism, computing professionals all over the world need to be aware of their weaknesses and protect their systems. The CIA created the Information Warfare Center, to avoid cyber-terrorism. The FBI investigates hackers and similar cases. The Secret Service pursues banking, fraud, and wiretapping cases. In addition, The Air Force created its own group, Electric Security Engineering Teams.

“The FBI and the System Administration, Networking, and Security Institute today released a list of the 20 top vulnerabilities of Internet-connected systems and urged companies to close dangerous holes while warning gain of virulent cyber-attacks to come”. (Luening, E. 2000)

To stop cyber-terrorism, President Clinton created the Commission of Critical Infrastructure Protection. (Luening, E. 2000)

What can you do to protect your computer from Cyber-terrorism?

Although there are no well proof ways to protect your computer from such a threat like that , there are some steps that can help you to be aware of this threat and help you stop cyber- terrorists from attacking your computer.

I. Install