The Dark Web Of Cyber Terror - The Threat That Got Lost in Traffic
Sunday, December 2, 2007 at 21:22 Sammy Elrom - 12/2/2007
Addressing the issue of Cyber Terrorism in Nov 2004, Prof. Seymour Goodman, from the Sam Nunn School of Intl’ Affairs & College of Computing at Georgia Tech, stated that “there have currently been no cyber terrorist attacks or evidence of Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organizations attempting one”. “
We are much more imaginative in thinking what they could do to us then I suspect they are,". Nonetheless, Prof. Goodman warned against “the presumption that terrorist organizations simply do not have or will never recruit the people with the expertise to carry out a cyber attack”. Prof. Goodman stressed the need to take the threat of cyber terrorism seriously because “as terrorists begin to realize the full potential of such an attack, cyber terrorism will become more of a threat later.”
This quote is a typical example of the duality surrounding the issue of cyber terrorism. Experts, from both sides of the debate, try hard to adhere with one side but still don’t wonder to far from the consensus line. A significant number of professionals agree that the potential damage exists, but differ in whether the threat will materialize, and if so, what would be the real damage terrorists will be able to inflict to global support and processing systems.
The Nay and Yea Sayers
“… Concern about the potential danger posed by cyberterrorism is thus well founded. That does not mean, however, that all the fears that have been voiced in the media, in Congress, and in other public forums are rational and reasonable. Some fears are simply unjustified, while others are highly exaggerated. In addition, the distinction between the potential and the actual damage inflicted by cyberterrorists has too often been ignored, and the relatively benign activities of most hackers have been conflated with the specter of pure cyberterrorism” argues Gabriel Weimann in “Cyberterrorism: How Real Is the Threat”, and he is not alone. Many differentiate between the possibility and the capabilities that terror organizations have at hand to carry out cyber attacks that could create real chaos and crash critical infrastructure systems.
