The 21st Century world has become a grand stage in the shifting of traditional threats into a modern state of threats in what many refers to asymmetric threats. The war between nations against nations in this era has become a thing of the past. The world now knows threats as an act of contriving a fearful state of mind, the feeling of uncertainty and unsafe. Except not by foreign governments, but by the hand of non-state actors declaring themselves as group and individuals responsible for creating mass disturbance in the society. In defining terrorism, the word terrorism has the same exact understanding of what the world portray threats is today, terrorism according to Oxford is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. What has cyber terrorism and its threats has to offer in order to even up with terrorism in the real world and transferred to the virtual reality? Cyber terrorism comes in all sorts of forms and purposes, most notorious of cyber threats lies in generating fear and destruction in the society through the uses of network or computer for their own ideological goals.
Brief Example of the Dangers of Cyber Terrorism
In the year of 2007, Estonia government and the economy was struck by the distributed denial of service attacks allegedly conducted by Russian groups, due to the facts that on that year, Estonian governments moved a controversial Soviet-era World War II memorial statue from a square in the capital city of Tallinn to a more secluded location. After the relocation of the statue, a wave of protest coming from pro-Russian groups to quickly gather, protesting the government on the policy of moving the statue. The protest was just the tip of the iceberg; the protester also issued threats to the government, shortly after the protest, a large scale cyber-attack happened on the 27 of April 2007. The attack lasted for a torturing 3 weeks and targeted vital infrastructure of the Estonian government. The series of the attack targeted governments portal, parliament portal, banks which include vital client database, ministries, and even Estonian newspaper wasn’t being left out from the cyber-attack that happens.
Estonia halts on a standstill for those 3 gruesome weeks of the attack. Government official and civilian are unable to use and gain access to the certain website and banks account due to the attack. The defaced website, clogging the routers and servers and by using the bot to disrupt even more on Estonia traffic network. The attacks almost bring a downfall to the Estonia economy sector and the livelihood of the day to day activities of the people just because of the great impact of how massive Cyber-attack may strike.
Cyber and Terrorism
Nowadays, the term of cyber and terrorism goes hand in hand following to the many phenomena that has happened surrounding those two terms. The worlds of cyber pose a great opportunity for a terrorist group to expand their organization freely and globally. As we all know the world of cyber is a borderless world that knows no boundaries whatsoever, as long as you have access to the internet any type of information that you seek can be easily obtained in a matter of seconds. Through this advanced technology, terrorist are able to maximize the breakthrough of the modern way of life to spread their propaganda and perspective of the society from their point of view and share it throughout the whole world, which by that mean will make the terrorist group easier in the aspect of recruiting new member or even sleeper cells position all over the world with the help of only the internet. Being exposed to the computer and internet network on a daily basis will gradually increase the knowledge and skills needed by the terrorist group to eventually provide a comprehensive reading such as regarding exploiting vulnerabilities in the online security system of governments, military or other critical infrastructure institutions for an instance a hospital and banks.
The growing problem for the current situation regarding Cyber-terrorism is in the destructive force that they are able to bring. Through the use of computer technology and the internet, terrorist seeks many different ways to inflict destruction and damage on tangible property or assets, or even death upon what they perceive as the enemy. For an instance, there have been many cases around the world that relates to the acts of lone wolf attacks. These lone wolf attack doesn’t commit acts of killing randomly but beforehand they pledge themselves as being part to a terrorist group which despise the western people and those who are against their belief in which by the mean of killing them is a way to prevail against the west hegemony. After the lone wolf accomplish to commit the act of the crime, the terrorist group will later on be held responsible to the act due to the fact that the lone wolf admitted that he pledge themselves as being part of the terrorist group only by the propaganda that he read or watch on the Internet.
Ways to Prevent and Best Possible Solution
Countries of the world, should create a Computer and Network Response Team to quickly retaliate any possible threats coming to the country. The team will not only being tasked to become a quick response team but also have the responsibility to keep a close watch on the local network address, and have the authorities to closes any websites that’s seems to contain any prohibited content that has been issued by the government. In the terms of multi-lateral aspect, regional institutions play a vital role to maintain a peaceful situations by making a treaty that contain mutual understanding between regional states regarding collective security on Cyber, hoping to create a stronger ties between states and a better security system for the country.
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