What does it mean to be a threat hunter? For that reason, a wide range of moderate definitions for cyber terrorism were proposed, especially in the period between 1997 and 2001. Infrastructure and Project Authoritys annual report ranks HMRCs 300m datacentre migration as unachievable, but ahead of All Rights Reserved, Below several of these definitions will be discussed to show examples of the confusion. Over 80% of attacks could be dealt with through basic cyber hygiene, such as patches, passwords, anti-malware, and firewalls; however, even when used, many do not keep them up to date. When attacks are intended to be disruptive or to further the attackers' political agenda, they can qualify as cyberterrorism, according to these other groups. H^Ag ?383Xu&V}k fgSQO. The Department of Homeland Security coordinates with other public sector agencies and private sector partners. Malware is a term used to describe malicious software, including spyware, ransomware, viruses, and worms. For instance, on October 21, 2002, all 13 Domain Name Server (DNS) root name servers sustained a DoS attack.50 Some root name servers were unreachable from many parts of the global Internet due to congestion from the attack traffic. An Attack at the Organizations Gateway: The most basic level of attack is an attack on the organizations gateway, that is, its Internet site, which by its nature is exposed to the public. This can be either direct or indirect harm through damage to or disruption of critical infrastructure. It recommends training employees on safety protocols and how to detect a cyber attack and malicious code. For instance, Mohammad Bin Ahmad As-Slim wrote a book titled 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihd, designed to promote discussion about the issue of war with the West and jihad generally (D. Denning, 2010; Leyden, 2002). To protect against ransomware and similar types of attacks, organizations must regularly back up systems, implement continuous monitoring techniques, and use firewalls, antivirus software and antimalware. Learn more about how Talos Threat Hunters investigate and defend against todays most damaging threats. Another method of attacking an organizations gateway is through attacks on Domain Name System (DNS) serversservers used to route Internet traffic. Within the area of systems damage, Fiore and Francois identified four areas of security lapse. At most it is regarded as a simple act of cybercrime or activism. Terrorists may force their intentions into the digital space in order to advance their agendas. IT support personnel within organizations: These are staff who are technically trained to deliver IT services to an organization. Zero-day vulnerability threat detection requires constant awareness. A multi-agent system with the goal of helping the user, the security expert, and the security officer is presented in this chapter. A zero-day exploit hits after a network vulnerability is announced but before a patch or solution is implemented. These attacks, called distributed denials of service (DDoS), essentially saturate a specific computer or Internet service with communication requests, exceeding the limits of its ability to respond and thereby paralyzing the service. Once malware has breached a device, an attacker can install software to process all of the victims information. Next this chapter looks at some of the mechanisms and pathways of deception that are utilized by jihadists to further terrorist objectives. The World Wide Web and later Web 2.02 fundamentally changed how terrorist organizations operate, as a robust, global platform to communicate, radicalize, recruit, share information, and launch cyber attacks. The first is breakdown in the human firewall, which can be reduced by using inquiries, controlling points of contact, and ensuring awareness of people in the building or accessing IT equipment. Often, attackers are looking for ransom: 53 percent of cyber attacks resulted in damages of $500,000 or more. Even now, we do not know the real attacker and what his intention was. Physical harm is not always considered a prerequisite for classifying a cyber attack as a terrorist event. Use of training systems such as Pandora (Bacon etal., 2012), which can simulate realistic crisis training using an event-based time line model to allow different scenarios to be explored, could prove particularly useful. All CEOs and senior board-level directors need to understand as much about the dangers of IT as well as how to exploit IT for business purposes in addition to who in their organization needs what type of training. This is the point a virtual attack is liable to create physical damage and its effects are liable to be destructive. For malicious use, DNS requests are manipulated to exfiltrate data from a compromised system to the attackers infrastructure. This chapter first examines the evolution of how terrorist organizations and supporters have used the Internet for conducting cyber attacks and then explores how these cyber jihadists use online deception to shape the narrative of their cyber network operations. In November 2011, their Get Safe Online Report (Get Safe Online, 2011) stated that 87% of users surveyed had virus protection software and 41% of them updated it every time they switched their computer on. According to the U.S. Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, possible cyberterrorist targets include the banking industry, military installations, power plants, air traffic control centers and water systems. In 2004, the FBI (Lourdeau, 2004) redefined cyber terrorism as: A criminal act perpetrated by the use of computers and telecommunications capabilities, resulting in violence, destruction and/or disruption of services, where the intended purpose is to create fear by causing confusion and uncertainty within a given population, with the goal of influencing a government or population to conform to a particular political, social or ideological agenda (FBI, 2004). The goal is to steal sensitive data like credit card and login information or to install malware on the victims machine. There is a complex network of private and public organizations used in supervising the Internet. These include the following types of attacks: Cyberterrorist acts are carried out using computer servers, other devices and networks visible on the public internet. Should an attack occur, they need to consider how they will deal with data losses, downtime, the impact on infrastructure, and their customers, including the loss of their information, costs, reputational damage, how to address future issues of security versus privacy, risks of outsourcing and off-shoring, and so forth. Its focus is on the integrity and availability of information. It seeks to harmonize international laws, improve investigation and detection capabilities, and promote international cooperation to stop cyberwarfare. Cybercrime has increased every year as people try to benefit from vulnerable business systems. We use cookies to help provide and enhance our service and tailor content and ads. If the terrorists want to launch large-scale attacks targeting these sensitive institutions through the Internet, they will probably have to try several times to be successful. Disinformation, which could include the dissemination of false information from an organization, or the insertion of false information into databases to reduce the effectiveness of such databases, is also potential threats. Other organizations and experts have said that less harmful attacks can be considered acts of cyberterrorism. The model comprises actions that relate to intelligence gathering, an area that was claimed to include three possible security lapses that would lead to penetration of an organization's system and loss of confidential or sensitive data. The FTC wants to stop Facebook-owner Meta from acquiring virtual reality company Within Unlimited. HlT0}]bp8.\9c]9.6 Members of the public: The single definitive source of advice for UK Internet users is Get Safe Online, which is a Web site sponsored by a cross section of organizations including the UK government. Learn how to defend against SQL injection attacks. In some cases, the differentiation between cyberterrorism attacks and ordinary cybercrime lies in the intention: The primary motivation for cyberterrorism attacks is to disrupt or harm the victims, even if the attacks do not result in physical harm or cause extreme financial harm. However, if we can attribute them to the source of attacks, we can detect and arrest them before they succeed. In instances where it was a denial-of-service attack, the sustained bandwidth of daily annoying attacks to organizations is often factored higher than the simple cyber surface scratching event which was labeled as a cyber-terror event in the press. A Structured Query Language (SQL) injection occurs when an attacker inserts malicious code into a server that uses SQL and forces the server to reveal information it normally would not. Lachlan MacKinnon, Dimitrios Frangiskatos, in Strategic Intelligence Management, 2013. The damage potentially caused in the virtual environment includes damage to important services, such as banks, cellular services, and e-mail. Relevant training through certifications and Chartered Status should be required and monitored by senior managers. Significant attacks, as the CSIS defines them, include those that target government agencies, defense and high-tech companies, as well as economic crimes with losses over $1 million. The impact in the definition is limited only to raising fear and uncertainty whereas terrorism may aim at disrupting the economy, the environment, international relationships, and governmental governance processes as well. CEOs, Senior Board-level personnel: Organizations are spending millions on security yet many still end up in the media as a result of security breaches. Specifically, he wrote: He [anyone with knowledge of hacking] should concentrate his efforts on destroying any American websites, as well as any sites that are anti-Jihd and Mujhidn, Jewish websites, modernist and secular websites (As-Slim, 2003). From these definitions we can derive elements for an encompassing definition of cyber terror as stated in the following sections. As a rule, a distinction should be drawn among three basic attack categories: an attack on the gateway of an organization, mainly its Internet sites, through direct attacks, denial of service, or the defacement of websites; an attack on an organizations information systems; and finally, the most sophisticated (and complex) categoryattacks on an organizations core operational systems for example, industrial control systems. While the obvious targets might be governments, banks, and utilities (e.g. Eric Luiijf, in Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism Investigator's Handbook, 2014. However, that is changing, and businesses are becoming targets as well. DNS tunneling utilizes the DNS protocol to communicate non-DNS traffic over port 53. Educating users and ensuring proxies and firewall filters that are working effectively are also important steps. The biggest issue is the deployment of these schemes. Most CEOs and board-level directors do not understand the security risks, how to manage them, or the behavior of their employees, which may result in security breaches (Lumension, 2011). Start my free, unlimited access. Organizations can also make use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology that makes encrypted data difficult to access. In 2021, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a bipartisan, nonprofit policy research group, identified 118 significant cyber attacks that either occurred during that time or were acknowledged to have occurred earlier. Sign-up now. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines cyberterrorism as any "premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems, computer programs and data, which results in violence against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.". Once the attackers interrupt the traffic, they can filter and steal data. The importance of testing all backup systems was also highlighted. An Attack against the Organizations Information Systems: The intermediate level on the scale of damage in cyberspace includes attacks against the organizations information and computer systems, such as servers, computer systems, databases, communications networks, and data processing machines. A myriad of similar concepts and terms such as cyber jihad, e-jihad, electronic jihad, and Internet jihad, often used interchangeably and inextricably, have further clouded the discussion and blurred the lines of scope and definitions. Once inside the system, malware can do the following: Phishing is the practice of sending fraudulent communications that appear to come from a reputable source, usually through email. Attackers target the disclosed vulnerability during this window of time. Around the millennium, many experts from different disciplines showed interest in the potential of cyber terrorism. Former Cisco CEO John Chambers once said, There are two types of companies: those that have been hacked, and those who dont yet know they have been hacked. According to the Cisco Annual Cybersecurity Report, the total volume of events has increased almost fourfold between January 2016 and October 2017. Copyright 2000 - 2022, TechTarget Nation-state hacker indictments: Do they help or hinder? These are very difficult to implement in the current Internet without support from government, manufacturers, and academics. However, there are also malicious reasons to use DNS Tunneling VPN services. One popular and relatively simple method of damaging the victims reputation at the gateway of the organization is to deface its Internet site. Attackers can also use multiple compromised devices to launch this attack. The FBI views a cyberterrorist attack as different from a common virus or denial of service (DoS) attack. As a result, the system is unable to fulfill legitimate requests. Defacement includes planting malicious messages on the home page, inserting propaganda the attackers wish to distribute to a large audience and causing damage to the organizations image (and business) by making it appear unprotected and vulnerable to potential attackers. Besides the Internet itself, many sensitive institutions, such as the U.S. power grid, nuclear power plants, and airports, may also be attacked by terrorists if they are connected to the Internet, although these sites have been carefully protected physically. Also, the system may provide advice to ordinary users when disputable decisions regarding computing node security must be made. Without knowing, the visitor passes all information through the attacker. However, there is no consensus among governments and the information security community on what qualifies as an act of cyberterrorism. Cookie Preferences This definition is imprecise. In order to reduce the risk from denial of service attacks, recommendations are to filter RFC 1918 addresses, controlling spoofed addresses, monitoring bandwidth usage, and scanning internal hosts and devices. &7>>7 I?{8|X^6+p]}~\yRD In order to avoid Web site defacement, which is the unauthorized alteration of Web site content, staging servers should be read only, user authentication should be required for sign-ons, software patches and security policies should be maintained and kept up to date, DNS should be hardened, and code should be reviewed to ensure weaknesses are weeded out of the system. Companies must also develop IT security policies to protect business data. Two common points of entry for MitM attacks: 1. Hamid Jahankhani, in Strategic Intelligence Management, 2013. The system will process local knowledge databases as well as external information provided by social networks, news feeds, and other forms of published information available on the Internet. Organizations are focusing on sustainability in all business divisions, including network operations. Training needs to start at an early age and more work needs to be done in educating school-age users as well as adults. The terror-related aspect of fear is lacking as well as the use of threatening with an attack. Suitable targets for such an attack are, among others, banks, cellular service providers, cable and satellite television companies, and stock exchange services (trading and news). DNS information should also be controlled and prevented from being taken from a system. The damage caused is in direct proportion to the level of investment. Yong Guan, in Managing Information Security (Second Edition), 2014. Even though the attack did not affect the companys core operational systems, it succeeded in putting tens of thousands of computers in its organizational network out of action while causing significant damage by erasing information from the organizations computers and slowing down its activity for a prolonged period. Cyberterrorism is often defined as any premeditated, politically motivated attack against information systems, programs and data that threatens violence or results in violence. Clearly a lot more is needed to educate the public with a growing trend in cybercriminals making use of a wide variety of techniques including the use of personal information from social media cites to tailor realistic information more able to fool people into allowing a variety of forms of malware into their computers to clickjacking, and so forth. Usually, the attacker seeks some type of benefit from disrupting the victims network. IT departments should monitor systems closely to ensure that corporate security policies are not being bypassed. The following list provides a brief summary of the different categories of people involved and a brief analysis of their training needs. The definition is sometimes expanded to include any cyber attack that intimidates or generates fear in the target population. If we only sit here and do not fight back, they will finally find our vulnerabilities and reach their evil purpose. IT project managers: It is not uncommon for large organizations to use staff with good project management skills, but limited technical capability, to manage and take oversight of IT projects; however, they frequently lack the technical knowledge to ensure the systems they manage are developed and maintained in a secure manner. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies. water, oil, electricity, gas, chemical, and communication infrastructure), as attacks on these have the ability to cause the most economic, political, and physical havoc and damage to the critical national infrastructure, cyber terrorism groups are becoming more coordinated and sophisticated in their attacks and will make use of any computer connected to the Internet to support an attack. Here are examples of 2021 attacks that CSIS identified: The key to countering cyberterrorism is to implement extensive cybersecurity measures and vigilance. System hijacking, which allows others to communicate securely using an organization's network, has been linked to steganography and can be controlled by checking for unauthorized software. In 2000, the information security expert Professor Dorothy E. Denning defined cyber terrorism as: an attack that results in violence against persons or property, or at least causes enough harm to generate fear (Denning, 2000). A clear line separating the attacks described here from the threat of physical cybernetic terrorism: usually these attacks are not expected to result in physical damage, but reliance on virtual services and access to them is liable to generate significant damage nevertheless. The intention of cyberterrorist groups is to cause mass chaos, disrupt critical infrastructure, support political activism or hacktivism, or inflict physical damage and even loss of life. The technological sophistication required at this level is greater than that required for an attack against the organizations gateway. The definitions also demonstrate that no act of cyber terror has occurred yet. It can also be used for command and control callbacks from the attackers infrastructure to a compromised system. This definition has its focus on the possible impact of cyber terrorism. Many cybersecurity experts believe an incident should be considered cyberterrorism if it results in physical harm or loss of life. IT developers: Many developers write poor code through laziness or a lack of understanding of how to protect their code from things such as SQL injection attacks. Many have not received the level of training in security required or have misunderstood the threat to their organization. No other factor in the last quarter century has so profoundly opened the aperture for enabling radicalized individuals and terrorist organizations to conduct mass communication and enhanced strategic messaging. Cyber terrorism therefore affects everyone from large organizations to all citizens who own or use a computer connected to the Internet. Secured government networks and other restricted networks are often targets. Scanning both inbound and outbound e-mails to ensure that unusual files are not being attached is also essential. Cyber terror against a country and its citizens can take place at a number of levels of sophistication, with each level requiring capabilities in terms of both technology and the investment made by the attacker. These staff need to be trained to understand the risks to the organization, the questions to ask, and how to ensure that their IT projects are providing the right level of security required. Also, it should be ensured that unauthorized VPNs are not being used to mask unauthorized access to the system. Want to protect your IT infrastructure and data from cyberterrorists and other attackers? Using a SOCKS server or port mapping, HTTP tunneling can get around TCP and UDP. The emphasis in this definition lies on the what, and whom. Worms, Trojan horses, and viruses are becoming more prevalent, sophisticated, and capable of ever more intelligent attacks on systems. The book discussed the issue of electronic jihad as the 34th principal way to engage in jihad. Attackers often do this by damaging or disrupting critical infrastructure. The simplest level of cyber terrorism entails attacks denying service and disrupt daily life but do not cause substantial, irreversible, or lasting damage. Even so, the complexity of the system is leading to an increase in the response time due to various bottlenecks in relation to information flow. ScienceDirect is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. ScienceDirect is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. Information and Communication Technologies, Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism Investigator's Handbook, Cyberterrorism the spectre that is the convergence of the physical and virtual worlds, Emerging Cyber Threats and Cognitive Vulnerabilities, Cyber Security Countermeasures to Combat Cyber Terrorism, Managing Information Security (Second Edition), Developing a Model to Reduce and/or Prevent Cybercrime Victimization among the User Individuals. Cyber-terrorism is common nowadays. Do Not Sell My Personal Info. Copyright 2022 Elsevier B.V. or its licensors or contributors. In other cases, the differentiation is tied to the outcome of a cyber attack. Combatants are excluded, which reflected FBIs mandate but did not help to derive the comprehensive definition. Cyber jihad, while still a malleable concept, has more generally been considered by experts to encompass jihadist use of the Internet both as a cyber attack channel against victim computer systems (not requiring resultant physical violence) and as a tool to facilitate other objectives of a terrorist organization. It shares information on potential terrorist activity and how to protect national security, as well as counterterrorism measures. Daniel Cohen, in Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism Investigator's Handbook, 2014. Examples include attacks against critical physical infrastructure, such as water pipes, electricity, gas, fuel, public transportation control systems, or bank payment systems, which deny the provision of essential service for a given time, or in more severe cases, even cause physical damage by attacking the command and control systems of the attacked organization. Depending on the potential impact, senior staff may need crisis management training to help them deal with the media and management of a breach, which may take months or years to fully uncover and resolve. This is known as a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. It sends HTTP and other protocol traffic over DNS. Malware breaches a network through a vulnerability, typically when a user clicks a dangerous link or email attachment that then installs risky software. Thus terror groups realize that Western nations dependence on the Internet for both commerce and communications is a major vulnerability that can be exploited to cause economic harm and fear in the general populace. Damage caused by such attacks can include theft of information; denial of service to customers, resulting in business damage to the attacked service; and damage to the reputation of the service. Chipmaker has reported a massive decline across its major business divisions. 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