Cyber Espionage And Cyber Terrorism

In order to properly answer the question posed we must first define what cyber-war and cyber-terrorism are. The Oxford Dictionaries defines cyber-war as “The use of computer technology to disrupt the activities of a state or organization, especially the deliberate attacking of communication systems by another state or organization:” Although there is no dictionary definition of cyber-terrorism, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has defined it as “the use of computer network tools to shut down critical national infrastructures (e.g., energy, transportation, government operations) or to coerce or intimidate a government or civilian population.” The author defines cyber terror as “the intimidation of civilian enterprise through the use of high technology to bring about political, religious, or ideological aims, actions that result in disabling or deleting critical infrastructure data or information.”

The availability of cheap cyber weapons has made cyber-terrorism a growing threat to the stability of America's critical infrastructures and society in general. Needless to say that cyber terrorism is a major issue for American policymakers and IT professionals. The growing threat to commercial and government entities has prompted organizations to develop effective strategies and methods to protect their resources and assets from the threat of attackers. Such strategies and methods include but are not limited to continual risk and vulnerability assessment, upgrade of software and use of tools such as encryption, firewalls and intrusion detection systems and the implementation of disaster recovery and business continuity plans in the case of a cyber incident. The following paper will offer a few basic definitions to illustrate the concept of cyber terrorism, discuss the physical and human aspects of cyber terrorism, offer assessment of the most pressing threats and the most vulnerable targets, recommend methods to combat national and international cyber terrorism. Finally, several preventative actions will be recommended for implementation. Finally, a basic checklist/template is also provided in order to better illustrate and summarize recommendations and suggestions.

Tomorrow’s terrorist may be able to do more damage with a keyboard than with a bomb (National Research Council1). The United States Department of States defined terrorism as: “…premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.” Terrorism not only occurs on the real life today but also on the internet. As the technology rapidly developed, there is an increase in the usage of internet, the threat comes along the way. Due to the occurrence of internet terrorism-generating fears to the public, the term “Cyberterrorism” was coined by Barry Collin in the 1980’s (Cyberterrorism Defined). The definition of cyberterrorism differs from various legal systems and government

The drawback of Estonia's information technology framework was that its defensive protocol was not much secure and could be easily hacked. Moreover, the country was much depended on internet.

Moreover, many organizations within the public and private sector heavily relies on technology to carry out their day to day operations. Those cyber technologies help make many difficult or tedious tasks easier to do and technology can also carry out many of those tasks more effectively and efficiently than humans can. However, cyber technologies are at risk of espionage, cyber attacks, or other crimes such as theft and fraud (Ammori & Poellet, 2010).

Cyberterrorist attacks can be threats, intimidation or even a violent act for personal gain, whereas a hacktivist will use less threatening approaches like a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to take down a service in an attempt to promote social change.

The demand for cybersecurity products and services will increase each year, especially because of what happened to companies like, Target, Sony and Home Depot, which has reminded companies the risk that their businesses will face everyday (Hughes, Bohl, Irfan, Margolese-Malin, & Solórzano, 2016). What happened to these companies has also increased the awareness of governments

It is possible that Mila could exhibit a sleep-wake disorder. From the information given, it appears as though her difficulty falling asleep is persistent and is increasingly disrupting the relationship between her parents. 1b. Susan is the sole parent trying to mend the problem. She is attempting a variety of tactics in order to help her child fall asleep but to no luck.

Cyberterrorism is the utilization of PC system instruments to hurt or close down basic national bases, e.g. transportation and government operations. The reason of cyberterrorism is that as countries and basic base turned out to be more subject to PC systems for their operation, new vulnerabilities are made. Cyberterrorism is an alluring alternative for cutting edge terrorists, who esteem its secrecy, its capability to exact gigantic harm, its mental effect, and its media offer. The risk postured by cyberterrorism has gotten the consideration of the broad communications, the security group, and the data innovation (IT) industry. Columnists, lawmakers, and specialists in an assortment of fields have promoted a situation in which complex digital terrorists electronically break into PCs that control dams or aviation authority frameworks, wreaking devastation and jeopardizing a large number of lives as well as national security itself. But, in spite of all the bleak forecasts of a digital produced doomsday, no single occurrence of genuine cyberterrorism has been recorded (Verton 129).

Cybercrime has become a fast growing concern for the 21st century as businesses, institutions and individuals grow into an interconnected web of computer networks. Online business transactions, along with the sharing of personal information, are vulnerable to a host of disasters that can reap economic and social havoc. Some sources say that today, cybercrime costs more than $1.0 trillion to society--Global Industry Analysts, Inc. forecasted the world cyber security market to reach $80 billion by 2017 (Gale, 2011).

Cyberterrorism is also clearly an emerging threat. Terrorist groups are increasingly computer savvy, and some probably are acquiring the ability to use cyber attacks to inflict isolated and brief disruptions of US infrastructure. Due to the prevalence of publicly available hacker tools, many of these groups probably already have the capability to launch denial-of-service and other nuisance attacks against Internet-connected systems. As terrorists become more computer savvy, their attack options will only increase.” (War on Terrorism, 2003)

“110 million Americans saw their identities compromised in 2014” Gault argues, adding that 110 million is one in every two Americans (2). With new technological inventions, such as the cloud, which allows remote access to stored information, there are “too many vulnerabilities hackers can exploit” (Gault 7). Cybersecurity has been breached due to the lack of integrity in the system. There is an acute focus on encryption in the industry with the belief that it is the key in ensuring confidentiality and ultimately, cybersecurity. Meanwhile, the industry “rarely” addresses integrity (Gault 17). Gault firmly argues that “the system is broken” because of the lack of integrity in the system. Confidentiality, while important, is not integral in preventing and providing solutions for data breach and theft. The current system solution for cybersecurity threat is dominated by a “lock-and-key system”; preventative, but once access is achieved, accessibility becomes much more effortless for others (Gault 21). Gault suggests an integrity solution that acts more “like an alarm”, a method focused on monitoring suspicious activity on online databases and platforms that then sends an alert when suspicious activity is detected. (22). Gault argues the loss of integrity is apparent in the cybersecurity industry because of the method in which prevents unauthorized access and thievery does not include elements of integrity. The

Every professional working in a security operations center understands that attacks are on the rise. Criminals who steal credit card numbers to resell on the dark web, hackers who launch ransomware attacks, industrial spies seeking to steal intellectual properties and state-sponsored hackers who seem to have diverse reasons for selecting their targets have all become much more adept at penetrating security measures. The financial cost of these breaches is shocking, according to the 2016 Data Breach Study conducted by IBM and the Ponemon Institute.

Cyber Terrorism is an attack executed by Cyber Terrorists via information systems to significantly interfere with the political, social or economic functioning of a groups or organizations of a nation or induces physical violence and creates panic. We define hackers as individuals who wish to access, modify data, files and resources without having the necessary authorization to do so, and/or wish to block services to authorized users. Cyber Terrorists are individuals or groups to utilize computer and networking technologies to terrorize. In this paper, we study the behavior of two groups of hackers: Cyber Terrorists and Common Hackers. Cyber Terrorism and Cyber Terrorists is generally considered classified information which cannot be released to the public, we can usually only interfere that Cyber Terrorism and Cyber Terrorists exits. However in 2010 federal bureau of investigation chief, Robert Mueller, told an RSA conference of computer security professionals, “The Cyber Terrorism threat is real and rapidly expanding”. He indicated that terrorists have shown a clear interest in hacking skills and combining real attacks with Cyber-attacks. [8]

In 1999, Chinese hackers targeted United States government sites, after an accidental bombing of a Chinese embassy in Belgrade. During this attack, government sites were hijacked and some sites suffered a denial of service attack. Most recently, it was suspected that Bank of America was the victim of a cyber terrorism attack; although no definitive evidence is available to substantiate that claim.  Cyber terror attacks pose a threat against the national security of the United States. In order to fully comprehend the threat that cyber terrorism poses, it is essential to understand the background, the effects, the reality of the threat and the future of cyber terrorism. This assessment examines the reality of the cyber terrorism threat, and