HAVOC

HAVOC

Cyber terrorism is the kind of terrorism which happens within cyberspace, and it generally means unlawful attacks and threats against computers, networks, and the information stored therein and the victims involved do that in an attempt   to intimidate or frustrate the government and its people in enhancing their social and political goals and objectives.


For it to qualify as cyber terrorism, an attack should bring  violence against persons  and properties, and also cause enough damage that can  generate fear for examples attacks that can cause death  or bodily injury like  explosions, plane crash, contamination of water  and severe economic loss.  Serious attacks that lead to critical damage of infrastructures can be acts of cyber terrorism and it’s dependent on their impact.

Cyber terrorism is a phenomenon happening in virtual environments, and it is a scenario happening in a new field and constitutes many questions that are yet to be answered, and it could relate to issues like the psychological effects of the violence portrayed in virtual environments, upcoming behavior changes and modification as a result of violence in the virtual environments, physical trauma as a result of virtual violence and finally military training by use of virtual environment.


How it occurs

There are uncountable numbers of ways that the terrorist can use the computer as a tool of terrorism; these may include facilitating identity theft, computer viruses, hacking, malware use, data destruction and manipulation falls under this category. The use of the computer in combination  with the computer be the target  form a picture of cyber terrorism, and from this  discussion  the most likely weapon of the cyber terrorist is the computer and there  need of setting  clear laws and guiding standards, which demands the computer Internet-connected  large operators computers to follow  in order  to achieve the proper upkeep of security, and this can be attained by defining minimum guideline standards and policies that are relevant  to computer network security and this definition of  standards would have  far reaching impacts  to the usability of America’s technology foundation and the security of corporations and  the entire nations.


This would be a moving target and would facilitate the structuring of a crucial and robust posture against the terrorist and threats from other hostile groups. Setting of minimum standards and policy guidelines should be easily adopted, affordable and supported by the security or application vendors themselves and not relying on individual users’ needs or requirements to drive the best practice guidelines.


Effects of a cyber attack be on a potential opponent

Effects of cyber attack affect a large number of potential targets that  either directly or indirectly such as  the impact of Personal Identity Theft in that  the impact of theft upon the unfortunate soul whose identity  stolen can be large in that terrorists would  use the stolen identity to hide their work, carry out certain terrorist operations under their someones  name and this could help them  escape  from  detection and potentially  act as a signal in  that an identity or operation would  be compromised.


The rise of stock trading  and stock message board  has  created conducive environment  for manipulation or modification  of a stock price,  and this technique of online line stock trading has been adopted by  terrorists as a source of funds  and putting into chaos markets and now it is 8is possible for terrorist to organize well  virtual attack  on banks and corporations  stock  rather than the corporation or the bank in itself.

Also, any person can now read and chat with proponents about something without due consideration of the safety and security of his or her home and new recruits can collaborate with terrorist groups that carry out certain dangerous actions even without coming in contact with them and as a result of these affiliations, it will complicate investigations and bring confusion in media reports. Also, computer technology has facilitated alliances formation in that groups with similar agendas can connect, and this could result into strengthening the individual organizations as they would access and acquire information immediately from their allies.


All cyber terrorism attack can be successful if they are carried out against corporations and individual users, but not the government but the government control ability is dependent on the overall economic stability and cyber terrorism against the government can only happen if the economy is not stable and this gives a chance terrorists   chance to launch an attack against the government and the third party.

Utilization of terrorism matrix  can provide effective alternatives of curbing  cyber terrorism  as it provides the solution  for computers as targets  and these computers can be conceptualized  and designed  in a more comprehensive way, but this could be useless  if the overall problems  of technology, legal and social arising  out of interaction by use of computer is not put into consideration.


 References

World Computer Congress workshop on Cyber terrorism (WCC, 2002)





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