Cyber Terrorism

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Cyber Terrorism

• Rob Felsburg

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Class Participation

• What do you think cyber terrorism is?

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Cyber Terrorism

• Cyber terrorism is generally understood as the
  crossing over of terrorism and cyberspace. This
  leads to unlawful attacks and threats of attacks
  against computer, networks and the info stored
  therein.
• In order to qualify as cyber terrorism an attack
  results in violence against person or property,
  or at least causes enough harm to generate fear.
• Many of these attacks are done using powerful
  software applications made readily available
  across the world wide web.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Open war is upon you whether you would risk it or
  not
• Cyberspace is constantly under attack, be it from
  spies, thieves, saboteurs or thrill seeking 11
  year olds. DOS attacks are launched, data is
  sabotaged, inboxs are flamed. Not to mention the
  countless viruss that are released, many make
  use of fraudulent transactions and harass
  workers, companies, and home users.
• These attacks are serious, and costly.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• 1996, a computer hacker allegedly associated with
  a white supremacist group, temporarily disabled
  an ISP and damaged part of their record keeping
  system. This was due to them trying to deny him
  service because he was sending out worldwide
  racist messages under their name.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• In 98, Spanish protestors swamped the Institute
  for Global Communications (ICG), with bogus
  e-mails, tying up users accounts due to mail box
  quotas, and phone lines due to user complaints.
  All of this was due to ICG hosting Euskal Herria
  Journal, a New York based publication for Basque
  independence. It was claimed that this journal
  was supporting Terrorism because a section of the
  page talked about a group, ETA, which claimed
  responsibility for assassinating Spanish
  political figures. Under threat of similar
  tactics being employed on other ICG companies,
  the page was removed.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• The first known attack against a coutrys
  computer system was employed against a Sri Lanken
  Embassy, in which Tamil guerrillas swamped the
  inboxes with over 800 mail messages a day over
  two weeks. The message written was simpleWe
  are the Internet Black Tigers and were doing
  this to disrupt your communications.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• Web defacement is also very common, when the
  Chinese embassy was accidently bombed in
  Belgrade, Chinese hactivist posted messages acros
  US government web sites saying We wont stop
  until the war stops

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• During the war in Kosovo in 99 NATO computers
  were spammed with e-mail bombs and DOS attacks by
  hacktivist protesting the bombings.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Examples -
• Since 97 THE Electronic disturbance Theatre,
  EDT, has been conducting web sit-ins, in which
  thousands of protestors against various sites in
  support of Mexican Zapatistas using software
  designed to flood a website with rapid request
  for downloads. This is more commonly used by
  Electro hippies and hacktivists than hackers
  since it is dependent on mass support.

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Cyber Terrorism

• In order for Cyber Terrorism to work two things
  must happen, there must be targets that are
  vulnerable to attack which could lead to violence
  and harming someone and also somebody to carry
  out these threats.
• In a study by NSA red groups, it was found that
  911 systems and power grids, could be hacked by
  publicly available tools.
• It is impossible to correct all of the
  weaknesses since many are dependent on suer
  configurations, and are always at the scrutiny of
  peopole using them which leads to someone helping
  a hacker who has access to the system to begin
  with

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Cyber Terrorism

• This is especially true about consultants and
  contractors who often have root or super user
  access.
• This past March, Japans Police reported that a
  software system had been bought to track 150
  police vehicles including unmarked cars. This
  software had been sub-contracted out to Aum
  Shinryko cult, the groups had already received
  classified information on about 115 vehicles. It
  was then discovered that this cult had employed
  this tactic to develop software four over 80
  Japanese firms, and 10 government agencies.

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Cyber Terrorism

• We can clearly see that the infrastructure is
  weak and can be manipulated by various meanbut
  what of the people who have the ability to do
  thisis there motive. This is why Cyber Terrorism
  is so dangerous, most hackers do posses the
  knowledge, but lack the motivation to create such
  violence and severe disruption. However many
  terrorist pride themselves on his ability.
• Despite the many actions of the few, there are
  few indications that this is going to become a
  widespread tactic of terrorists.

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Cyber Terrorism

• In 1999, the center for the Studyt of Terrorism
  and Irregular Warfar at the Naval Postgraduate
  School in Monterey California issued a report
  titled Cyberterror Prospects and Implications.
  It was concluded that the barrier for entry for
  anything beyond annoying hacks is quite high, and
  that terrorists generally lack the wherewithal
  and human capital needed to mount a meaningful
  operation. Cybertterorism it has been concluded
  is a thing of the future.

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Cyber Terrorism

• We can clearly see that the infrastructure is
  weak and can be manipulated by various meanbut
  what of the people who have the ability to do
  thisis there motive. This is why Cyber Terrorism
  is so dangerous, most hackers do posses the
  knowledge, but lack the motivation to create such
  violence and severe disruption. However many
  terrorist pride themselves on his ability.
• Despite the many actions of the few, there are
  few indications that this is going to become a
  widespread tactic of terrorists.

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Cyber Terrorism

• Three groups have been defined
• Simple unstructured Conduct basic hacks against
  individuals using tools created by someone else.
  Little command and control.
• Advanced structured (2-4) Conduct more
  sophisticated attacks against multiple systems or
  networks and possibly the ability to create or
  modify tools. Elementary command and control.
• Complex coordinated(6-10) Capability for
  coordinated attacks causing mass disruption,
  integrated defenses including cryptography,
  Ability to create sophisticated hacking tools.
  Highly capable command and control.

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Cyber Terrorism

• 5 Terrorists group types
• New Age
• Religious
• Ethno-nationalists-separatists
• Revolutionary
• Far right extremists
• Only religious likely to seek Complex coordinated
• New age or single issue pose immediate threat

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Cyber Terrorism

• Drawbacks -
• Systems are complex, and thus harder to control
  an attack.
• Unless people are injured there is less drama and
  emotional appeal
• Terrorist close minded, and less likely to switch
  from old means of attack unless inadeuqate

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Cyber Terrorism

• In conclusion at the present cyber terrorism to
  the extreme is not as much of a burden, however
  general cyber crime is very much a part of
  todays cyberspace and cyber terrorism is very
  likely to be a few years in the future but
  nevertheless coming.