Cyberterrorism, Cyber terrorists and their methods to launch an attack Research Paper

Cyberterrorism, Cyber terrorists and their methods to launch an attack - Research Paper Example Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives (Verton, 2003). With ever changing technology, there are ways upon ways to hack or use the internet in a criminal manner such as cyber espionage or information warfare. Cyber terrorism is a combination of cyberspace and terrorism. Often this type of warfare is used to persuade a group or government to follow certain political beliefs. Cyber terrorism can be used to help plan other terrorist activities, soften a target prior to a physical attack and generate more fear and confusion concurrent with other terrorist acts. Cyber terrorism has no boundaries as it is not limited by physical space and can be carried out by anyone and anywhere in the world. This paper aims to provide an explanation of what cyber terrorism is and how it is propagated in information technology world and the impacts it has on the businesses and organisation s that use the internet and networking to carry out their activities. It is important that we i dentify and protect the critical infrastructures which include government operations, gas/oil storage and delivery, water supply systems, banking and finance, transportation, electrical energy, telecommunications and emergency. According to the former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 The nation is vulnerable to new forms of terrorism ranging from cyber-attacks to attacks on military bases abroad to ballistic missile attacks on U.S. cities. Wars in the 21st century will increasingly require all elements of national power – not just the military. They will require that economic, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement and intelligence capabilities work together. Cyber terrorist use different methods to launch a cyber-terror attack. One method is hacking, which is the unauthorized access to a computer or network. An alternative technique is the Trojan horse program designed to pretend to do one thing while actually doing another, with the purpose of damaging the compu ter’s software or system operations. Computer viruses can be spread extremely fast and cause major damage. Computer worms are self-contained programs that are able to spread functional copies of itself or its segments to other computer systems. Then there’s email relates crimes that involve e-mail spoofing, spreading Trojans, viruses and worms. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that can be accomplished by using a single computer or millions of computers throughout the world. To perpetrate such an activity, the ‘attacker’ installs a Trojan in many computers, gain control over them, and then send a lot of requests to the target computer. And last, but not least, cryptography literally meaning covered writing, involves the hiding of data in another object; it can also be used to hide messages within image and audio file. Although there is no definite way of stopping cyber terrorism there are several measures to prevent such acts. For example, using an up-to-dat e computer security software systems and firewalls, personal vigilance. security levels in private sector critical infrastructure fields. Using a high level virus-scanning program like Kaspersky or Norton devices will be safe from majority of the little viruses that you may come in contact with. In order to understand the cyber terrorism four major elements have to be considered and examined these elements are the perpetrator of the crime , the place where the crime takes place, the tools that are used to aid the perpetration of the crime, the action what actions take