Cyber-Terrorism is the act of pre-meditated, politically motivated attack/s against information, computer systems, computer programs, and data that results in violence against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents. Too many big words? Basically, cyber-terrorism is just like any other act of terror - but it is using cyber space, and software attacks as the main terror tool.
Terrorism - scary. Cyber-terrorism - scary scary. Why? It just comes back to the nature of cyber space.. its reach is just so much wider! It affects so many people and so many things which depend so much on cyber space, software and IT in general.
Go back to my previous posts on 'IT Dependence', 'The Information Age' and 'The Internet of Things'. Now imagine if those precious databases and integration points were compromised, maliciously altered, or straight-up wiped clean and been shutdown. The impacts would no longer be "in the clouds", it would instead pose very real, physical threats to our lives.
Below are examples of real cyber-terrorism acts, some would get us thinking.. (1)
A threat (in reference to a database compromise) by a group known as the "Cyber Caliphates", which has claimed to have hacked into US's CENTCOM sytem..
Coming closer to home, we see the same group 'playing games' with our Malaysian national carrier, Malaysian Airlines (MAS).. the same group has claimed to have hacked MAS's website, but this claim was disputed by MAS who then counter-claimed that it was merely a software attack via a Pharming mechanism - this is where the Domain Name compromised and users are re-routed to a false landing page, in this case the actual site data had not been compromised.
This is a serious matter, and experts do warn of the possibilities of cyber-terrorism:
Imagine the impact and its magnitude if cyber-terrorists were to shutdown our power systems, water supplies, etc. If our power-grid were to fall into the wrong hands, who knows what can happen...
Reference/s:
(1) http://news.siteintelgroup.com/blog/index.php/entry/342-%E2%80%9Ccybercaliphate%E2%80%9D-claims-hacking-twitter%2C-youtube-accounts-of-centcom%2C-stealing-information
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