by Tamu Browne

Created on: April 16, 2009   Last Updated: April 19, 2009

World Wide Terror

Security experts, the media, and the man on the street all have one thing in common; they all believe that a cyber terror act is imminent!

Wikipedia.com defines cyber terrorism as "the use of computers and information technology, particularly the Internet, to cause harm or severe disruption with the aim of advancing the attacker's own political goals." It is felt by security professionals that the western world's increasing reliance on information systems to do everything from paying a cable bill to running diagnostic tests on nuclear weapons, makes the information technology infrastructure a prime terrorist target, as such an attack has the potential to cripple the economy and cause a virtual standstill in the Western Hemisphere.

Adam Savino in his paper Cyber-Terrorism puts forward several hypothetical scenarios of cyber terror acts. One scenario involves a possible cyber terror attack that would target airline passengers through the air traffic control tower of an airport. The cyber terrorist hacks into multiple air traffic control tower servers and adds false information about the airplane's location, speed, and other important variables causing incorrect information to be disseminated to the pilots causing chaos in the skies and ultimately downing airliners. Savino then examines an economic scenario where a cyber terrorist "disrupts bank software, interrupts financial transactions, and hacks into the stock market, deleting and changing stock prices. The cyber terrorist also introduces false information to the media concerning corporate mergers, stock prices, and corporate earnings. The disinformation causes a rapid decrease in stock prices, a loss of market capitalization, and a destabilization of the market. The citizenry lose faith in the economic systems and economic destabilization is achieved." The final scenario that Savino proposes is one in which a cyber terrorist places computerized bombs throughout a city. The bombs transmit signals to each other, and can be detonated by a timer or a computer.

These scenarios seem like the plot for a mega Hollywood blockbuster. Possible, but are such situations truly probable? Well consider the following statistics. In the first half of 2002, there were more than one hundred and eighty thousand Internet based attacks on businesses. Additionally, reported systems vulnerabilities and security incidents are doubling each year. Consider this, in January of 1999, for two full days, hackers repeatedly

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