THE SUPER COMPUTER LITERATE TERRORIST

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During the next 20 years, the United States will face a new breed of Internet-enabled terrorists, super computer literate criminals, and nation/state adversaries who will launch attacks not with planes and tanks, but with computer viruses and logic bombs. American adversaries around the world are hard at work developing tools to bring down the United States’ private sector infrastructure. The United States faces an increasingly wired but dangerous world, as evidenced by the following:

  • Many countries have programs to develop cyberattack technologies and could develop such capabilities over the next decade and beyond.

  • The U.S., Russia, China, France, and Israel are developing cyberarsenals and the means to wage all-out cyberwarfare.

  • Terrorist groups are developing weapons of mass destruction.

  • Russia has become a breeding ground for computer hackers. The Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency and organized crime groups recruits the best talent.

  • Electronic stock scams, robberies, and extortions are proliferating.

A report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) went even further, warning of a future cyberarms race and the rise of terrorist groups supported by super computer-literate youngsters bent on disrupting the Internet. China is of particular concern here, because it’s devising strategies for unrestricted electronic warfare. Officials said critical infrastructures in the United States could be targeted in the future as revenge for incidents like the 1999 accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Serbia. The Chinese government has even suggested having every person in China send one e-mail to an address of interest in the United States or use hacker tools easily available on the Internet to support a mass denial-of-service attack.

On-line extortion and falsification of shipping manifests by criminals, and attempts by countries to use hacking techniques to evade trade sanctions are a rising concern. DoD officials are also becoming increasingly concerned with the proliferation of “always-on” Internet appliances such as modems and network printers. Hackers are finding ways to penetrate these devices and possibly use them as launching pads for more devastating distributed denial-of-service attacks.

In 2000, a hacker cracked into a printer at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Center and rerouted a potentially sensitive document to a server in Russia. Therefore, the real threat comes from the design of the U.S. infrastructure and the people who run it.

Companies build these systems and their business models on the assumption that things will always work. If a major attack is made on the infrastructure, it’s going to happen from the inside.

The aforementioned reports hold a “powerful message” for the national cybersecurity effort. However, that future preparedness will be determined by how much emphasis companies and the government place on fixing known vulnerabilities, training and education, and enforcing good security policies.

Although the threat of terrorists groups attacking the infrastructure is real, a word of caution is needed. It’s scary, but it’s really hard to bring down the Internet.



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Computer Forensics. Computer Crime Scene Investigation
Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation (With CD-ROM) (Networking Series)
ISBN: 1584500182
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 263
Authors: John R. Vacca

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